Make biology relevant again! Pre-service teachers’ views on the relevance of biology education This paper was presented at the ERIDOB conference 2020

Abstract

ABSTRACT Biology education should be relevant to young students so that they can become interested in biology and understand biological topics in their everyday and vocational lives. We conducted interviews and collected mind maps to examine Finnish pre-service biology teachers’ (N = 16) views on the relevance of biology education. Furthermore, we analysed Finnish secondary school biology curricula, which were compared with the pre-service teachers’ answers. We classified the views on relevance into nine main categories using grounded theory as the methodological frame of reference. Pre-service teachers emphasised the relevance of biology to the student’s own life, whereas scientific practices and the nature of science were expressed in secondary school curricula more often. Novice pre-service teachers put more value on general knowledge, while more experienced pre-service teachers were more likely to mention sustainable futures and societal aspects in their reasoning. Based on the results, we identified two stages in the development of the views. This study suggests that pedagogical studies, teaching experience and teacher training have an impact on the pre-service teachers’ views about the relevance of biology education. Moreover, we could find differences between curricula and pre-service teachers’ views, especially regarding scientific practices and the role of the nature of science in biology education.