Barriers To Biological Fieldwork: What Really Prevents Teaching Out of Doors?

Abstract

This paper considers a range of factors that may contribute to an unwillingness or inability of teachers to participate in the teaching of biology through fieldwork. Through a synthesis of the views of both pre-service teachers in training and primary school teachers in practice we explore the relative importance of a wide range of potential barriers and potential responses to them in the context of the wider literature. We conclude that although fieldwork may be impeded by the interaction of a wide range of individual barriers, including an individual's predisposition towards the outdoors, it is possible to group interacting barriers into two main areas: school culture and teacher confidence. It is also apparent that barriers may assume different levels of significance when considered in general terms rather than when applied to a particular context and that the significance of barriers may change through time. Encouragingly, we have also shown that in-service teachers have a willingness to overcome these barriers.

Applying Information and Communication Technologies for Learning among Pre-Service Biology Teachers in School of Education, Vietnam

“…In order to handle with many difficulties in biology teaching (Scott et al, 2014), PBTs need to have good ICTs skills to make visual views, animation presentations... However, our findings indicated the advanced skills in "Create a presentation with animations" and "Create a multimedia presentation (text, graphics, video...)" among the PBTs were low.…”

Effectiveness of mobile apps in teaching field-based identification skills

“…The ability to identify taxa to appropriate levels and to study these organisms in the field is therefore a key skill for field biologists (IEEM 2011a;IEEM 2011b). In spite of the importance of field skills to these subjects, it has been suggested that the provision of field teaching is in decline (Scott et al 2014;Smith 2004) as we see a generational attrition in academic staff with the required knowledge of field natural history to appropriately teach such courses. For example, taxonomy is under-represented in many undergraduate bioscience degree programmes (Leather and Quicke 2009), which will have a negative effect on global conservation efforts, as protecting species starts with putting the correct name to it (Hopkins and Freckleton 2002).This also has important implications for graduate employment, as many employers in the ecological sector are looking for graduates with these skills (IEEM 2011a; IEEM 2011b).…”

Okul Öncesi Dönem Çocuklarının Doğaya Yakınlık (Biyofili) Seviyelerinin Araştırılması

“…Çocuklar özellikle doğadaki bazı canlıların (örn: arı ve sinek), onlara zarar verip, canlarını acıtabilecekleri korkusu ile biyofobik yanıtlar verirken; doğada kendilerine zarar vermeyeceklerini düşündükleri canlılara (örn: kelebek, uğur böceği ve kuş) biyofilik tepkiler vermiştir. Bazı araştırmacılar da (Dyment, 2005;Scott, Boyd, Scott ve Colquhoun, 2015, Yılmaz, 2017 çocuklarla yaptıkları çalışmalarda, çocukların oynamayı tercih etmediği doğal alanların sık bitki örtüsüne sahip olduğunu, suyun ya da zehirli böceklerin yaratabileceği tehlikelerle dolu olabileceğini belirtmektedir.…”