Analysis of activities in junior secondary science curriculum of Bangladesh-A focus on science process skills

This study aims to explore process skills in junior secondary science curriculum in Bangladesh. Data was collected through document analysis. An interpretive research methodology was adopted to extract meaning from the data. Activities of three science textbooks from grade six, seven and eight were analyzed. All the activities were selected from physical science part of the textbooks. 68 activities from 35 chapters were analyzed. The study has revealed that junior secondary curricular activities emphasized on basic process skills mainly observing, inferring and to some extent measuring. Other basic skills like classifying, predicting, communicating and time space relationship are less emphasized. Except identifying variable skill, other integrated skills were not found at all. The study also reveals the inconsistency of process skills reflected in the curriculum across grade levels. As promoting process skills is one the main goals of science curriculum, this study strongly suggests to re-organizing the contents and activities of the curriculum so that every process skill is communicated.