Identifying Students' Interests in Biology Using a Decade of Self-Generated Questions
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Ayelet Baram-Tsabari 1 * , Ricky J. Sethi 2, Lynn Bry 3, Anat Yarden 4
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1 Department of Education in Technology and Science, Haifa, ISRAEL
2 University of California, Riverside, CA, USA
3 Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
4 Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, ISRAEL
* Corresponding Author

Abstract

An identification of students’ interests in biology can help teachers better engage their pupils and meet their needs. To this end, over 28,000 self-generated biological questions raised by students from kindergarten through graduate school were analyzed according to age and gender. The sample demonstrated a dominance of female contributions among K- 12 students. However, girls’ interest in submitting questions dropped as they grew older. Topics popular among different age groups of males and females were identified, and the development of interest was described. Ways in which students’ interests can be incorporated into a standard-based curriculum are discussed, mainly as a trigger for the learning of less popular subjects which are required by the curricula.

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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Article Type: Research Article

https://doi.org/10.12973/ejmste/75228

EURASIA J Math Sci Tech Ed, 2010 - Volume 6 Issue 1, pp. 63-75

Publication date: 21 Jun 2010

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Article Downloads: 1089

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