Primary education in Slovenia is compulsory and lasts nine years. During this period, students acquire general knowledge that is assessed by the criteria in the curricula set by the field experts with the help of teachers. Students' success is influenced by the ever-evolving technology that is opening up a new world to them and is offering a lot of information on a daily basis. At home as well as in schools, children are constantly exposed to the new interactive devices which also contribute to changing the conventional frontal-based learning. However, each teacher should be able to know which lesson plan and materials are most effective for the students’ knowledge acquisition.
With this master's thesis, we wanted to find out the possibilities for using animal organs intended for human consumption in teaching biological contents. First, we examined the legal acts which regulate the use of animal organs in teaching and which animal organs are accessible and permitted to be used, their price and which topics in the curricula of Natural Sciences and Biology allow their usage. With a survey among 126 Slovene teachers of biological contents in primary schools we examined how often teachers use dissection of animal organs and which animal organs are most often used, what discourages or encourages them to use dissection. We also analyzed the link between the use of dissection of animal organs in teaching biological contents and the school environment, teachers’ working experience and their gender. Furthermore, we examined teachers’ opinion on the quality of the knowledge acquired by observing the dissection of an animal organ in comparison to learning with the conventional materials used in teaching biological contents in elementary schools (e.g. plastic models, slides, presentations, course books, videos).
The results showed that the dissection of animal organs for human nutrition with the purpose of teaching biological contents in elementary schools is allowed by the legislation. The number of regulations that limit teachers of biological content varies – depending if they buy and store the animal organs themselves or if they order it through the school kitchen and store it there until they use it. Acquiring an animal organ represents a smaller financial burden; the costs depend on the organ’s type and source. The curricula of Natural Science 7 and Biology 8 offer many options for using accessible animal organs. The results of the online survey showed that teachers use the dissection of animal organs that are accessible at the butcher’s, however, in their opinion, they are not familiar enough with the legislation and the ways of using an animal organ. Still, most of the teachers believe that the quality of the knowledge acquired in dissecting an animal organ is better.
It can be concluded that the teachers would more often use animal organs for human consumption for dissection if they were more familiar with the possible ways of using animal organs in teaching according to the legal requirements, if they had accessible materials and possibilities for their incorporation into the curriculum.
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