Integrated science is a ubiquitous school subject that is found in primary and middle-school levels around the world. Being a hybrid subject comprising several science disciplines, it poses many challenges to teachers as they are obliged to teach beyond their disciplinary comfort zones. In addition, this subject is prone to a lack of coherence, which helps people see how a small number of key ideas in a discipline can build upon each other to deepen understanding. Using integrated science textbooks from mainland China since 1990 as a case study, their (i) disciplinary emphasis (i.e. which topics & disciplines were emphasised) and, (ii) coherence of topics were therefore examined. The results showed that physical science topics were heavily and consistently emphasised in these textbooks, which likewise corresponded with the high number of buttress topics found in this discipline. Life science topics were the next most emphasised followed by earth science ones, a trend present since the 1990s in this country. We conclude with implications for improving science teacher training/professional development as well as student scientific literacy from this study of disciplinary emphasis and coherence in integrated science textbooks.

Educators have long questioned why some students can experience achievement more easily in some school subjects/curriculum, but not in others. We argue that learners cannot ignore navigating two key features inherent within every curriculum––its cognitive demands as well as its opportunities for access to knowledge that are the twin foci of this study. We adopt Specialisation codes from Legitimation Code Theory to examine the epistemic and social relations of intended learning outcomes from secondary science- and arts-based curricula in mainland China. The results showed that science curricula coded predominately with knowledge codes, but the latter possessed mainly elite codes. Compared to science, the Chinese arts curriculum is therefore more challenging for learners because achievement here is largely dependent on possession of specific attributes, dispositions, or qualities that can potentially restrict access. Implications for improving teaching and learning in these two types of curriculum in this region are discussed.