Ideas and evidence in science: the portrayal of scientists in GCSE textbooks

This article deals with the portrayal of scientists in commonly used school GCSE textbooks and addresses the issue of their suitability for teaching the ideas and evidence strand of the new English science curriculum. After detailing the results of a survey of GCSE textbooks, it looks at how the theory of evolution by means of natural selection is dealt with in a representative sample of 13 key stage 4 science/biology textbooks and concludes with a suggested approach for the teaching of ideas and evidence in science.