Elementary science education in Taiwan—from the perspective of international comparison

Abstract

The East Asia region has often won excellent remarks from international evaluation institutions such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). As a result, science education in the East Asia region is closely focused on by the global community. Taiwan is considered as a key geographical center in this region, where elementary science education, due to its special backgrounds, has its own appearance and features. In this chapter, drawing from literature and secondary data analysis of TIMSS, we have provided a close description of Taiwan’s special characteristics in elementary science education. Three sections are outlined in this chapter to introduce Taiwan’s: (1) schools’ resources and environment; (2) science curriculum and text-books; (3) teaching and learning. In order to emphasize Taiwan’s uniqueness in comparison to other important parts of the world, our chapter compares Taiwan’s performance with other countries within the TIMSS and Korea, Singapore, Japan, USA, and the Russian Federation in particular, due to its excellent performance in the TIMSS. As a result, this study found that Taiwan’s elementary science education has many features versus these top-ranking countries/regions. These include: (1) relatively adequate facilities, in terms of laboratory and book resources (e.g., almost all schools have a laboratory(ies), etc.), (2) vital family and parent support, and (3) emphasizing experiments in science teaching, etc. Some other issues, such as: (1) schools’ strong opinions on asking for more resources for science teaching, (2) the content of the fourth grade textbooks being emphasized physical science, (3) the relative low correlation between Taiwan’s curriculum and TIMSS examination, (4) science textbooks are much thinner than those of some other countries, (5) science class hours are relatively lower, and (6) less emphases on “read,” “memorize,” and “explanation,” etc., were also pointed out for further research while formulating the next innovations in science education.