A large compendium of works on bias in education and textbooks, including in science, was published in the 2012 book "The New Politics of the Textbook." Of particular interest is a chapter by Ceglie and Olivares in which they discuss and tabulate gender and race in images for two high school biology textbooks. They found a lack of…

Presents a summary review of 36 introductory college level astronomy textbooks for nonscience majors. References to more detailed reviews published elsewhere are provided where they exist. (SL)

Discusses criteria for writing, designing, and selecting a physics text including topics covered, target students, diverse problems, and focused content. (YP)

Presents a few illustrations of physics areas such as capacitors, free fall, vectors, and waves, to show that methods of presentation of specific topics, in some physics textbooks, produce in the average student the wrong impression and ignorance of important scientific facts. (GA)

Fourteen high school physics textbooks are evaluated. Criteria include content, distribution/organization of content, level (appropriateness of presentation for high school students), readability, appearance, presentation of physics as a growing body of knowledge, awareness of social problems, and adequacy of materials for additional work by…

Identified are errors in diagrams from the textbook "Physics" (Little, Brown, and Co., Boston, 1987). Presents and discusses the errors in eight textbook diagrams. The errors include mechanics, optics, and electricity. (YP)

Evaluates an elementary textbook (Journeys in Science, volume 3) on thermodynamics. Points out some inadequate expressions and explains the reasons. (YP)

Presents an analysis of the treatment of Newton's Laws and relativistic mass in the nine most popular college physics textbooks. Concludes that only two textbooks give a correct interpretation of relativistic mass and only a single text gives a correct discussion of Newton's First Law. (JRH)

Indicates and describes items that are incorrect in textbooks and a teacher edition of Discover SCIENCE for K-6. (YP)

Discusses reading levels of books in the sciences, and explains the use of the Readability Graph. Also reported are reading levels of selected high school physics texts. (GA)

Describes errors occurring in a textbook presentation of electrical resistance across carbon arcs and filaments. (SL)

Discusses errors and misleading statements found in discussing the meaning of the minus sign in treating the topics of the conservation laws of energy, momentum, and angular momentum. (CS)

Some fundamental relations that were strangely presented in a recent edition of a high school physics text (Physics: Fundamentals and Frontiers) are discussed. Relations discussed include: negative acceleration, vector components, and analyzing the interaction of a spring pendulum suspended from another spring pendulum. (BT)

Parts 1 and 2 (SE 524 424 and 527 089) described Flesch readability for determining a text's reading level and results of applying the test to astronomy/physics textbooks. This part presents results for a new sample of texts, including calculus-level texts. A comparison with high school physics texts is provided. (JM)