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The use of inquiry tasks is one of the features of the latest elementary social studies textbooks, and according to Taiwan's Curriculum Guidelines for Social Studies, at least one inquiry activity for each unit and one thematic inquiry and practice unit for each volume should be designed. This study, based on the perspective of inquiry-based design, explored how inquiry tasks are articulated in elementary social studies textbooks. Qualitative content analysis was adopted to analyze three versions of textbooks developed on the basis of the new Curriculum Guidelines for Social Studies. The findings were as follows: First, the content of the "thematic inquiry and practice unit" emphasized integrative materials and lacked the integration of social issues. Second, the inquiry tasks employed a question-oriented approach, but the inquiry paths and answers were too limited to encourage students' active exploration. Third, the inquiry tasks in the textbooks favored individual inquiry over collaborative inquiry, and peer collaboration was only included in part of the inquiry process. Finally, the inquiry tasks failed to prompt the active participation of students with a preference for structured inquiry forms. This paper also provided several suggestions for the design of inquiry tasks in elementary social studies textbooks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This study compared the algebra content of instructional materials in the most popular elementary school mathematics textbook series used in Taiwan, Finland, and Singapore, respectively. The research method employed was content analysis. Mathematical problems were the unit of analysis and they were classified based on their cognitive types, contexts and representational forms. Findings showed that the percentage of algebra problems presented in the textbooks in these three countries was not high, only about 7% to 13%. In sample problems, Taiwan and Singapore presented a detailed problem-solving process, but Finland only offered brief descriptions or definitions. We found the ratio of different types of problems in textbooks to be similar in the three countries with most of the problems classified as 'procedure without connection' in each country. As to problem contexts, most algebra problems in Taiwan were contextual problems in nature, but in Finland and Singapore, were classified as non-contextual problems. When the representational forms of problems was examined, we found that most problems were presented in word form in Taiwan, but most frequently in a purely mathematical form in Finland and Singapore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]