This paper takes six volumes of middle-grade Life Adaptation textbooks as research objects, covering all lesson contents of Grade Four Volume One, Grade Four Volume Two, Grade Five Volume One, Grade Five Volume Two, Grade Six Volume One and Grade Six Volume Two.

2.2.1. Detailed Classification Table for Safety Education Content Analysis

At present, there is no unified classification standard specially for safety education content. This study compiles a detailed classification table for safety education content analysis by referring to the dimension classification of safety education content in the Guidelines and combining safety education requirements listed in the New Curriculum Standards. The natural disaster section of the Guidelines requires students to know common ecological problems affecting their hometown and build awareness of environmental protection. The units of “resource conservation” and “garbage classification” are designed to cultivate students’ environmental awareness. Accordingly, these two themes are included in the statistical scope of safety education content in the textbooks (Table 1).

2.2.2. Classification Table of Research Scope for Safety Education Content

In accordance with the structural layout of the Life Adaptation textbooks, this paper divides each lesson of the textbook into six modules: lesson title, lead-in, main text, extended learning, comprehensive practice, evaluation and feedback. The comprehensive activity in the final lesson contains two modules, namely task sheet content and evaluation and feedback (see Table 2). This study thoroughly analyzes the safety education contents contained in lesson titles, lead-ins, main texts, extended learning, comprehensive practice, evaluation and feedback as well as comprehensive activities in the Life Adjustment textbook.

Table 1. Detailed classification table for safety education content analysis.

Table 2. Column structure of safety education contents for each topic and comprehensive activities in life adaptation textbooks.

2.2.3. Coding Procedure

The first author acted as the primary coder in this study. With reference to the self-compiled analysis schedule for safety education content, the researcher coded safety-related contents across the six volumes of Life Adaptation textbooks. To reduce subjective bias and improve coding reliability, the second author was invited to conduct independent coding for three textbooks: Grade 4 Volume 1, Grade 5 Volume 2 and Grade 6 Volume 1. Both researchers separately coded textbook content relying on the unified safety education analysis framework. Two indicators were adopted to test intercoder reliability: the Index of Category Agreement (CA) and the Intercoder Reliability Coefficient (R). The calculated CA value was 0.92 and R value was 0.96, demonstrating satisfactory high coding reliability. All inconsistent coding results were discussed by the two researchers to reach a unified final coding standard.

The safety education content integrated into the Life Adaptation subject is based on the actual needs of students’ current and future lives, with the core objective of cultivating students’ awareness of risk prevention and practical self-protection skills. For the middle grades, the New Curriculum Standards indicate that in the domain of personal life, students should recognize abnormal physical conditions, understand basic knowledge of disease prevention and coping measures, gain a preliminary understanding of fundamental knowledge about puberty, and maintain good emotions; in the domain of family life, students should understand major home safety knowledge; in the domain of school life, students should abide by student rules, be able to use school facilities safely, and master simple methods of seeking help; and in the domain of community life, students should make reasonable use of community resources and possess basic community safety knowledge. The Guidelines divide the safety education content for the middle grades of primary school (grades 4 to 6) into six categories: social safety, public health, accidental injuries, network or information security, natural disasters, and other events. This study analyzes the safety education contents in Life Adaptation textbooks based on the safety education modules stipulated in the New Curriculum Standards and the Guidelines. Each lesson of Life Adaptation textbooks consists of six columns. If safety education contents appear in a certain column of any lesson, this column is counted once only, regardless of the volume of safety-related information contained within it. For example, the lesson Food Safety Awareness, classified into the public health category, includes safety education materials in all six columns. Each column is counted as one entry, generating a total statistical count of six times. The comprehensive activity section of Life Adaptation is divided into two columns: contents matching task sheets, and evaluation and feedback. Likewise, each column of every comprehensive activity is recorded as one occurrence if safety education content is involved, no matter how much relevant content is presented.

3.1.1. Distribution of Safety Education Contents in Middle-Grade Life Adaptation Textbooks (See Table 3)

In terms of the distribution of safety education contents in the middle-grade Life Adaptation textbooks, social safety category has the highest frequency, followed by public health and accidental injury. Natural disaster and network and information security have relatively fewer occurrences, while other incidents rank the lowest. Grade 5, Volume 1 contains the largest number of safety education contents across all textbooks. Overall, the safety education system exhibits an unbalanced structural layout, accompanied by knowledge discontinuity in certain grades.

Table 3. Statistical distribution of safety education content in each category (Unit: Times).

3.1.2. Distribution of Safety Education Contents in Various Columns (See Table 4)

Table 4. Statistical table of safety education content distribution in various columns (Unit: Times).

For dedicated safety education topics, the textbooks construct a complete structural framework covering main-text teaching, extended learning supplements, comprehensive practical activities, and evaluation and feedback. Safety education contents embedded in conventional teaching topics are primarily presented through the main text. The safety knowledge explained in the main text is mostly accompanied by corresponding consolidation assessments in the evaluation and feedback column of the same lesson, which forms a coherent closed-loop teaching system with strong internal consistency. In the column framework of comprehensive activities, the frequencies of safety education contents in task sheets and evaluation and feedback are consistent.

3.2.1. Arrangement: Closed-Loop Teaching System Aligned with Students’ Growth Trajectory

Horizontally, the content covers personal life, family life, school life, community life, as well as the national and the world. Specific themes include personal dietary hygiene safety, household safety, campus safety, traffic safety, community safety, getting along well with others, and basic legal knowledge. Vertically, knowledge is expanded layer by layer with clear levels, and each unit consists of several fixed sections namely scenario picture introduction, knowledge learning, extended learning, comprehensive practice, and evaluation and feedback. It forms a complete closed-loop teaching structure with sound integrity.

First of all, the textbooks use illustrations of daily life scenarios to activate students’ existing life experience and introduce relevant teaching knowledge points of each lesson step by step. Second, the learning of basic knowledge and practical operational skills forms the core of the whole teaching process and sets basic learning standards that all students need to achieve. Third, layered extended learning materials are provided to fully accommodate students with different cognitive levels. The safety education materials are arranged in a stepwise manner to help teachers carry out targeted differentiated instruction. Fourth, practical exercises are arranged under a unified column named comprehensive practice. This part mainly helps students internalize knowledge learned in class and deepens their understanding and memory of safety knowledge through hands-on practice. Finally, a supporting teaching evaluation module is provided for both teachers and students, and its evaluation items correspond exactly to key learning points of each lesson ([2]). For instance, the Grade Four Volume One lesson Pay Attention to Food Safety opens with a scene where Beibei and her mother buy bread at a bakery and the mother checks the shelf life label to lead into the theme of food safety. The lesson then presents core food safety knowledge, followed by extended learning about shelf life, a comprehensive practice activity that asks students to distinguish edible and inedible foods, and ends with evaluation and feedback completed by both students and teachers. Overall, the arrangement of safety education content in the revised Life Adaptation textbooks is scientific and reasonable. The textbooks follow a logic from simple to difficult and take varying student abilities into consideration, leaving room for flexible teaching adjustments.

3.2.2. Content: Highly Life-Oriented and Closely Tied to Real Daily Scenarios

All safety education content in the textbook is drawn from the four high-frequency life circles of students’ personal life, family life, school life, and community life, with no abstract theories. The cases, illustrations, and practical tasks mainly involve behaviors that students encounter in daily life, such as tying shoelaces to prevent falls, being careful of slippery floors when bathing, avoiding getting hands caught when taking the bus, and preventing electric shocks when using electricity at home. In addition, there are no complex safety concepts; only visible and actionable behavioral norms are retained, and no in-depth principles are involved.

3.2.3. Presentation: Primarily Illustrations with Simple Text, Adapted to Cognitive Levels

First, the entire volume combines illustrations with text. All safety sections are accompanied by real-life photographs, cartoon images, and step-by-step diagrams, with a high proportion of pictures that are clear and easy to understand. The text is brief, with simple sentence structures, mostly using short sentences and imperative language, which reduces the difficulty and lowers the threshold of reading comprehension, which matches the cognitive feature that middle-grade students with intellectual disabilities in special education schools are dominated by concrete thinking. Second, skill components are broken down step by step. Skills such as dressing, tying shoelaces, washing hair, bathing, and taking transportation are all broken down into step-by-step diagrams, with complex actions divided into sequential steps and one diagram per step, making it convenient for students to imitate and learn. Third, the sections are fixed and consistent. Each lesson is structured with four major modules: “main text,” “extended learning,” “comprehensive practice,” and “evaluation and feedback,” with a fixed structure that helps students easily adapt to the classroom routine. Comprehensive practice mainly involves selection, judgment, hands-on practice, and picture-based discrimination, with simple question types that emphasize behavioral application. Fourth, the presentation form highlights activity-based learning, integrating the processes, methods, and skills of activities.

3.2.4. Goal: Emphasize Behavioral Practice over Theoretical Memorization

First, the core objective of the textbooks is not to require students to memorize safety rules, but to help students master actionable safety behaviors. Comprehensive practical tasks primarily take the forms of picture-based judgment, scenario simulation, hands-on operation, and real-life identification, with no written memorization questions included. Second, the extended content mostly consists of life-related extended skills for real-world practical application. Third, the evaluation and feedback dimensions focus on whether students can complete operations in a standard way, such as proper mask wearing and abiding by pedestrian traffic regulations, while downplaying the memorization of knowledge points.

The safety education contents in the Grade 4 - 6 Life Adaptation textbooks for students with intellectual disabilities mainly cover social safety, public health, and accidental injury, with the highest content density distributed in Grade 5. However, the contents concerning natural disasters, network information safety, and other safety categories are insufficient and fragmentarily arranged. The overall safety education system exhibits an unbalanced structure and presents knowledge discontinuity in certain grades. In addition, the safety education contents in the middle-grade Life Adaptation textbooks are rooted in the daily life of students with intellectual disabilities, conform to their cognitive laws, focus on behavioral cultivation, and possess high practicality.

Students with intellectual disabilities generally have limited comprehension abilities and have difficulty generalizing learned knowledge. Therefore, how to effectively teach the safety content in Life Adaptation classes is a major challenge. Based on the psychological development patterns of children with intellectual disabilities, the basic principles of the Guidelines for Public Safety Education in Primary and Secondary Schools, the teaching recommendations proposed in the New Curriculum Standards (2016 Edition), and the guiding principles for textbook compilation, in combination with the characteristics of the safety education content in the middle-grade Life Adaptation textbooks, this paper puts forward several recommendations for teachers in special education schools for students with intellectual disabilities.

4.2.1. Follow the Principle of Spiral Progression and Differentiate Curriculum Goals for Different Grade Levels

To carry out safety education in middle-grade Life Adaptation, it is necessary to follow a spiral progressive design approach, set tiered learning objectives for grades 4, 5, and 6 respectively, and arrange teaching content from shallow to deep in a gradual and progressive manner, so as to achieve cyclic reinforcement of safety knowledge and progressive increase in learning difficulty. In teaching, it is necessary to connect with the safety knowledge already learned in the lower grades, continuously reinforce it, repeat core safety points, and increase the depth of practice, while avoiding simple repetition of content. In class, teachers should design tiered tasks based on students’ real-life scenarios and gradually cultivate students’ life adaptation abilities and comprehensive literacy in self-protection.

4.2.2. Respect Students’ Individual Differences and Adhere to Individualized Education

Implement tiered teaching appropriately and pay attention to individual differences ([8]). Currently, special education is still primarily delivered through collective teaching, and in this process, the relationship between individuality and commonality should be properly managed, with differentiated teaching implemented ([5]). Assess students’ abilities and current status, and carry out targeted instruction. Adopt a tiered grouping classroom model to implement teaching tasks and accommodate the developmental needs of students with different learning profiles; at the same time, combine students’ classroom performance and the degree of completion of learning objectives to conduct teaching review and continuously optimize classroom teaching methods.

4.2.3. Base Instruction on Students’ Life Needs and Select Appropriate Teaching Content

Ding Yong pointed out that textbooks are compiled based on the common characteristics of learners; however, due to cultural diversity across regions in China, imbalanced regional development, and individual differences among children with intellectual disabilities, teachers should, while fully implementing the national curriculum plan, flexibly optimize the overall curriculum planning by adding special education-related teaching modules such as potential development and functional compensation for impairments, thereby enhancing the diversity, flexibility, and appropriateness of curriculum content ([3]). Moreover, common safety issues may vary across different regions. Therefore, the selection of teaching materials should be grounded in students’ real daily lives and focus on the various practical problems they actually face in their learning, growth, and everyday life. Based on real scenarios in middle-grade students’ daily campus, home, and travel experiences, teachers should select high-frequency and likely safety incidents as teaching materials, while avoiding abstract cases detached from reality. Teaching materials should be designed around common experiences such as students being home alone, going out with peers, activities between classes, and using household appliances, while promptly capturing safety blind spots that students tend to overlook. Teachers should use real-life events and typical campus examples in instruction to help students intuitively perceive the practical value of safety knowledge, guide students to transform what they have learned into daily self-protective behavioral habits, and effectively enhance their safety awareness in life adaptation.

4.2.4. Adopt Diverse Teaching Formats and Emphasize Practical Experience and Hands-On Practice

Teaching formats should be flexibly selected based on the actual conditions of the school, including situational drills, role-playing, fun competitions, game interactions, group discussions, and experience-sharing activities, so as to build learning scenarios that match students’ cognitive levels and guide students to form personal experiences and reflections, gradually enhancing their comprehensive ability to handle real-life problems. It is important to emphasize the integration of classroom instruction with practical activities. Priority should be given to using real-life settings such as school corridors, staircases, cafeterias, playgrounds, and school entrances for teaching; simulation areas (simulated electrical outlets, simulated intersections, simulated bus stops) should be set up in the classroom to reduce the difficulty of scene transitions. At the same time, attention should also be paid to environmental infiltration on campus. On the one hand, activity areas should be designated: walking routes should be marked on playgrounds, corridors, and staircases to regulate students’ movement patterns and reduce the risk of collisions. On the other hand, signs should be posted throughout the campus: “Mind the Steps” on staircases, “Danger: Electric Shock” near power sources, “No Running or Chasing” in corridors, and sorting labels on trash bins, so that the environment becomes a “silent classroom”.

4.2.5. Combine School Education with Family and Community Education

Home-school collaborative education should be advocated to boost teaching effects ([8]). Special education is a complex systematic project for the whole society, which requires multi-level and multi-dimensional participation of different groups, departments and organizations such as schools, communities and families ([10]). Students with intellectual disabilities have weak ability to transfer safety knowledge. Inconsistent behavioral standards between home and school will greatly weaken teaching effects, so a unified training system should be constructed as follows. First, align teaching content. Schools can distribute Family Safety Tips to parents every month to match the classroom themes of the current month. For instance, if household electricity safety is covered in class that month, parents will be reminded to eliminate hidden dangers at home and teach children not to touch power sockets. Second, assign parent-child practical homework. Typical tasks include checking expired food at home with parents, practicing crossing roads, simulating receiving strangers and practicing garbage classification. Third, unify verbal instructions. Identical safety phrases and expressions such as sentences for turning down strangers shall be used both at school and home to prevent students from getting confused. Fourth, carry out one-on-one communication for high-risk students. Teachers will make separate management plans with parents for students with problematic behaviors including running around without restraint, eating unknown objects, opening doors randomly and trusting strangers easily. Fifth, maintain consistent safety guidance for outdoor activities. Parents are reminded to follow the behavioral norms taught at school when taking children to ride public transport, go shopping or walk on roads.

4.2.6. Organize Comprehensive Activities Flexibly and Adopt Integrated Objective Evaluation

The Ministry of Education-edited Life Adaptation textbooks for the middle grades has added a comprehensive activity section, which designs various practical activity themes. These themes integrate the knowledge and skills related to life adaptation acquired throughout the semester, embed them into real-life scenarios, and accomplish knowledge consolidation and practical application. Teachers conduct observational assessments based on the activity process to determine whether students have achieved the preset teaching requirements. The model of conducting academic evaluation through comprehensive practice can both promote flexible transfer of knowledge and skills and allow for intuitive judgment of students’ mastery levels in authentic contexts. In actual teaching, teachers should flexibly view the evaluation form of “activity as a vehicle,” clearly recognize that goal integration is the key focus in comprehensive activities, incorporate goal requirements into all aspects of the activities, and assess students’ goal attainment during the activities. At the same time, teachers should be able to flexibly adapt the themes of activities and select the most suitable themes for students with different conditions in different regions ([9]).

4.2.7. Emphasize Integration with Instruction in Other Subjects

The three subjects of Life Chinese, Life Adaptation, and Life Mathematics share unified character settings and life scenarios, facilitating subject integration. Emphasis should be placed on cross-curricular complementarity with the new Life Chinese textbooks by incorporating safety education content into them. On the one hand, this helps improve the quality of school instruction; on the other hand, it can fully stimulate students’ enthusiasm for learning safety knowledge and enhance their ability to solve problems in emergency situations ([7]). In daily teaching, subject boundaries should be broken down, and safety-related materials embedded in Life Chinese texts, picture-based speaking activities, oral communication exercises, and the “Chinese Little World” sections should be explored, so that content such as recognizing safety signs, using help-seeking language, and following travel rules can be taught in an integrated manner. At the same time, integrated practice should be carried out in coordination with subjects such as Life Mathematics and Labor Skills, using recognition reading, hands-on practice, and situational drills to consolidate safety skills. Multiple subjects working in the same direction and reinforcing each other can reduce knowledge fragmentation, allowing students with special needs to repeatedly consolidate safety knowledge across multiple scenarios and steadily enhance their life safety literacy.