Citizenship Education in Science Curricula: Exploring the Saudi Arabia Case

Abstract

This study aimed to reveal the extent to which citizenship values are included in Saudi Arabian elementary science textbooks, which teachers have to use. The content of six grades 4 to 6 textbooks used in the first and second semesters was analyzed with a focus on three themes related to citizenship values: cultural, social, and political dimensions. Each of these value dimensions has 10 sub-components. Each textbook for each semester was analyzed using a purposively developed Likert scale to gauge the extent of citizenship value inclusion. The results reflect nominal inclusion of citizenship values in the science textbooks: cultural values reflected low inclusion (mean 2.09), political values had low inclusion (mean 1.97), and social values had very low inclusion (1.77). In addition, there was an insufficient degree of balanced progression and expansion of the distribution of citizenship values in relation to their different dimensions over the successive school grade levels. Saudi curriculum planners are encouraged to design developmentally appropriate science curricula that include citizenship values in each of content, resources (especially textbooks), activities, topics/issues, and assessment.