In this master's thesis, we focused on the subject of cell, which is first discussed in the 6th grade of elementary school in the natural sciences class. The subject of cell is one of the more difficult topics, which is developed over the years in school. It is important that the students understand the discussed subject well already in the sixth grade so they later face fewer problems. In the introductory part of the master's thesis, we reviewed the literature on the efficiency of the use of models in understanding of the topic and the misunderstanding that students have.
We analyzed three natural sciences textbooks certified for the sixth grade. On the basis of the results of our prior research (Cell knowledge of the sixth and seventh graders of elementary school), we prepared lessons and carried them out. We used models with about a half of students, while the other half was provided only an explanation supported by pictures. We prepared a test on the knowledge of cell, which included 14 questions of different types. The test was distributed to 137 students of three Slovene elementary schools. Each student solved the test three times. We wished to determine the students’ prior knowledge, their knowledge after the lesson and the durability of their knowledge after approximately five weeks. We were interested in finding out whether the students’ understanding of the subject of cell depends on the method of the lesson. As expected, we found out that the students had a very poor prior knowledge of the cell since in the sixth grade this subject is discussed for the first time. However, the students’ knowledge after the lesson and after approximately five weeks was good. In this research, we found very few statistically significant differences between the knowledge of the students who used models and the ones who did not. This indicates that the use of models in teaching is in itself not a guarantee for a better understanding of the topic. Another finding was that the students had problems distinguishing between the cell structures of a plant cell and an animal cell. They often failed to distinguish between the mitochondrion and the chloroplast and confused the concepts of the cell wall and the cell membrane.
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