Goals of contemporary education are set towards students’ understanding of the curriculum. This raises a question of which methods and teaching strategies can aid a teacher in his achieving the goal as successfully as possible. Teachers of scientific subjects are encouraged to use the hands-on approach which would lead the students to individual ideas and thinking, as well as problem solving. The latter especially would enable the students to approach and understand the function of nature holistically. One of the explicit methods used by a teacher of biology in his lessons could be dissection, but opinions on it use raise questions of ethical nature and the method’s effectiveness.
We conducted a survey asking about the use of dissection as a teaching method in biology lessons and its usefulness and effectiveness, and how dissection or the feelings the students have while dissecting, influence their knowledge and interest. We conducted the survey among students of years 7 and 9 of primary school, where we compared the usage of dissection as a teaching method with the traditional approach to lessons. The students completed a questionnaire before and after the lessons, which provided the information on students’ knowledge and their opinion of dissection. We found out that negative feelings towards dissection influence the interest in such lessons, while the level of disgust is influenced by gender and age of students. We were not able to show any correlation between the teaching method, gender and age of students and their knowledge.
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