High school biology: What makes it a challenge for teachers?

Abstract

This study contributes to our understanding of the complex issues inherent in dealing with the heterogeneity of current high school science classrooms, by reporting on in-depth interviews with 38 experienced biology teachers. Analyses of teachers' responses revealed complex and occasionally counterintuitive relationships among: (a) their perceptions of what was distinctive about their school, its biology program, or their students; (b) their allocation of class time; (c) their efforts to individualize instruction and meet the needs of a heterogeneous student population; (d) their student outcome goals; and (e) the methods they used to evaluate student progress. Thus, for example, of the 9 teachers who cited the diversity of their students, 4 also commented on their poor motivation, but another 4 also commented on their high motivation. In addition, teachers reported using a similar range of instructional formats but for different reasons, depending on the characteristics of their students (e.g., cooperative learning groups used to compensate for poor attention spans, to challenge bright students, and to foster social tolerance). Discussion of these findings addresses several points of relevance for science education, teacher preparation, and curriculum reform.The present study had two major aims. The first was to report the results of detailed analyses of the ways in which high school biology is taught by experienced teachers in a representative sample of classrooms, so as to consider the many different ways a particular curriculum can be approached, and to discuss the contexts in which specific teaching strategies seemed most successful. A second major goal of this study was to consider the implications for teacher preparation, and how teachers can best be equipped to deliver challenging curricula to the dauntingly varied group of youngsters making up America's schools today.Current reconceptualizations of curricular frameworks reflect the goal of helping students integrate what they learn in the science classroom into their daily lives, by placing the curriculum content in more ecologically valid contexts, making it more inquiry-based, and urging the adoption of outcomes assessment measures which tap students' ability to engage in guided discovery activities rather than their memory for content per se (cf., for example, recommendations of the National Science Teachers Association, 1982;Bronkhurst & Yaeger, 1986). Such reconceptualizations also now place greater emphasis on the need to develop students' critical 0