SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ PERSPECTIVES ON AND ATTITUDES TOWARDS LABORATORY WORK IN BIOLOGY

Interest in Biology among secondary school students in Slovenia is dropping from year to year. 1,046 secondary school students were surveyed about their preferred number of group mates in the laboratory, their attitudes towards and positive and negative views of laboratory work in Biology. From the students' perspective, the preferred way of teaching biology would be a mixture of interesting lectures and laboratory activities where they would have the opportunity to find solutions to the problems on their own through work in small groups. This is in direct opposition to prevailing teaching practice, where lectures are the dominant way of teaching. To overcome the loss of interest in Biology among students, action is needed immediately. Bridging the gap between students' perspectives on and opinions about good teaching practice and actual teaching practice should follow three tracks: the first one involves changes to the syllabus in such a way that less is more; the second one requires rewriting of manuals and textbooks, and the third is a change in the teaching practice of individual teachers. If for the first two teachers can find the excuse that this is outside their sphere of competence, there can be no excuse for avoiding immediate changes in teaching techniques.