Research has shown that students generally do not show an interest in biology and that biology curricula are too extensive and outdated. The purpose of our research was to find out what high school teachers think about individual learning goals. Data was collected with an online questionnaire prepared for this purpose, which was partially or fully answered by 35 high school teachers. On the Likert scale, they assessed the complexity and importance of the 61 learning objectives of the chapters Cell Structure and Function, and Genes and Inheritance from the Biology Curriculum in the Gymnasium Program. Objectives were assessed with grades from 1 (very insignificant or undemanding learning goal) to 5 (very important or demanding learning goal). We also tried to find out whether the opinions of teachers with different years of service lengths differed. We found that the assessed learning objectives seemed important to teachers (M = 4.31) and demanding (M = 3.82). They assess the learning goals that students are supposed to have acquired in primary school as less demanding. They find the learning objectives in the Cell structure and function more important (M = 4.32) but less demanding (M = 3.83) compared to the Genes and Inheritance set (M = 4.29, M = 3.79). Teachers' opinions on the complexity and importance of the assessed learning objectives in our sample of teachers are not related to their years of service length, as there was a statistically significant difference in only one objective.
|