Content analysis of scientific activities in Omani Grade 9 physics textbooks: Alignment with critical and creative thinking in inquiry-oriented science education

This study examined the representation and balance of critical and creative thinking skills in scientific activities included in Omani Grade 9 physics textbooks and developed an analytical framework to inform curriculum development and textbook design. A descriptive content analysis approach was employed to analyse scientific activities, exercises, and worksheets included in the Grade 9 Physics Student Book, Activity Book, and Teacher Guide for both semesters of the 2024/2025 academic year. The analysis focused on five critical thinking skills—knowledge of assumptions, inference, interpretation, deduction, and evaluating arguments—and five creative thinking skills—fluency, flexibility, originality, problem sensitivity, and elaboration. The findings revealed an uneven distribution of higher-order thinking indicators across the analysed curriculum materials. For critical thinking, knowledge of assumptions and deduction were the most frequently represented indicators, whereas evaluating arguments received the least emphasis. For creative thinking, fluency and problem sensitivity were most frequently represented, while originality and elaboration were minimally represented. Overall, the activities provided greater opportunities for procedural reasoning, application, and idea generation than for evaluative reasoning, originality, and elaboration. These findings suggest that greater balance is needed in the design of physics textbook activities, particularly through inquiry-oriented and open-ended tasks that encourage evidence-based evaluation, multiple solution pathways, and the generation and refinement of original scientific explanations. The study provides an analytical framework that may support curriculum developers, textbook designers, and science educators in strengthening higher-order thinking and inquiry-oriented science education in alignment with future-oriented skills frameworks.