Relevance of Nigerian Chemistry Textbooks to STM Knowledge and Skills

The study examined the extent to which four Nigerian Chemistry textbooks satisfied the criteria for inculcating STM knowledge and skills. The study adopts descriptive design that involves content analysis of predefined themes in the textbook. The instrument for data analysis is Textbook Analysis Scale (TAS) which is a combination of thematic and quantitative approach to assessing the quality of selected Chemistry textbooks. TAS consists of four themes which are topical coverage, practical and project activities, study questions, readability and comprehensibility. The frequency of the themes in each textbook was determined through content analysis that involves coding the manifest content. The study found the topical coverage index (TCI) of the Chemistry textbooks to be 0.97and study questions indices (SQI)of the four Chemistry textbook to be 0.9, 1.5, 0.85 and 0.52. Also, the practical and project activities indices (PAI) of the Chemistry textbooks are 0.81, 0.25, 0.40 and 0.29. The readability and comprehensibility indices (RCI) for the four textbooks are 0.64, 0.56, 0.60 and 0.28. All the Chemistry textbooks meet the acceptable criterion for TCI. Also, two Chemistry textbook did not meet the criterion for SQI. The Chemistry textbooks with PAI values of 0.25 and 0.29 did not meet the criterion for promoting enquiry. Lastly, only one of the textbooks did not meet the criterion for readability and comprehensibility. The implication of the finding is that Chemistry textbooks should be reviewed to ensure they reflect the goal of the Chemistry curriculum and satisfy the criteria for inculcating STM knowledge and skills.