Manifestation of Three Visions of Scientific Literacy in a Senior High School Chemistry Curriculum: A Content Analysis Study

Three visions of scientific literacy have been discussed in the literature of science and chemistry education, but little is known of their embodiment in chemistry curricula. Grounded on the conjunction of the three visions of scientific literacy and the subject matter of chemistry, this study investigated the manifestation of scientific literacy in an official senior high school chemistry curriculum (SHSCC) promulgated by the Ministry of Education of China in 2018. Content analysis was employed as the research method with "performance requirements" of this chemistry curriculum document as the target of the analysis. Both qualitative and quantitative results were obtained. With regard to qualitative results, 11 categories of the subject matter of chemistry under Visions I, II, and III were identified, implying that curriculum content has been tremendously broadened in the SHSCC. With regard to quantitative results, a major finding is that Vision I dominates the whole curriculum in spite of a rather large amount of the subject matter of chemistry under Visions II and III. In addition, it was found that various distributions of the three visions of scientific literacy exist in the three types of chemistry courses incorporated in the 2018 SHSCC. On the basis of these findings, desirable patterns of the proportions of the subject matter of chemistry under three visions of scientific literacy would be suggested for those chemistry courses that are intended to meet various needs of different groups of students.