fatemeh aghdam tabar

for senior high school students in the experimental sciences. Utilizing a descriptive content analysis, the research scrutinizes three volumes of biology textbooks published in 2018. The analytical framework employed is the Family Resemblance Approach by Erduran and Dagher. Textbook sentences were coded according to eleven categories of the Family Resemblance Approach, and data analysis was conducted using descriptive statistics and Shannon’s entropy. The findings reveal that out of 4,912 units of analysis, the Cognitive-Epistemic System (comprising aims and values, methods and methodological rules, practices, and knowledge) dominates with a frequency percentage of 97.49%. In contrast, the Social-Institutional System (including social certification and dissemination, professional activities, scientific ethos, and social values) accounts for 2.25%, and the Institutional Systems Aspect (encompassing political power structures, financial systems, and social organizations and interactions) constitutes a mere 0.24% of the analyzed units. Overall, the analysis indicates that high school biology textbooks predominantly emphasize the cognitive-epistemic components of science over the institutional-social aspects. The findings suggest that high school biology textbooks significantly prioritize the cognitive-epistemic components of science, potentially underrepresenting the social and institutional dimensions, which may impact students’ holistic understanding of the nature of science. Therefore, it is necessary to address other components of the nature of science in textbooks in a balanced manner.