DEVELOPMENT OF FUTURE PRIMARY TEACHERS’ SCIENTIFIC ATTITUDE TOWARDS LIVE OBJECTS: CASE OF OBSERVATION OF A BURGUNDY SNAIL

The study programme of Primary Education includes Didactics of Natural Science Education (10 ECTS) and Culture and Technologies of Regional Studies (summer practicum) (5 ECTS). The latter study subject aims at educational learning of regional culture, animate and inanimate nature. In natural science education it is particularly important to ensure that curriculum is implemented through active engagement of learners: exploring, experimenting, exchanging experience and discovering. It is important to ensure that learning is conducted employing natural means and school learners are familiarised with real natural objects and phenomena. Therefore, the summer practicum for future primary teachers is organised in green learning environments through exploration and active involvement. During the summer practicum, which lasts two weeks, students take part in field or hiking trips, complete a big variety of assignments. One of them is familiarisation with the Burgundy snail: its observation and related research assignments. The snail is an appropriate object to learn animate nature as early as pre-school age. Since natural science education is based on the scientific approach, all the research assignments carried out at school contain the structure of a scientific method (observation, hypothesis, experiment, interpretation, conclusions). Growing snails in the classroom, learners are able to get acquainted with the features characteristic of organisms, parts of their bodies; a close access to snails allows for school learners‘ understanding of differences between animate and inanimate objects; a longer care of snails enables school students to observe the process of their reproduction: laying of eggs and development; while feeding snails it is possible to identify what they eat and what food they dislike; observing snails it is not difficult to notice their reactions to the environment and what organs help them to orient in the surrounding environment, etc. Keeping a living creature in the classroom, school children learn to follow hygiene regulations and to responsibly behave with animals. Possessing experience in raising animals, children are able to apply their knowledge and abilities in new contexts, i.e. speaking about feeding, keeping and living conditions of other animals, etc. Following the principle that “personal experience is much more important than the read truth”, school students received a task to keep and observe a Burgundy snail for a week. The students recorded experiments with the snails and reflected their activities in their observation diaries. The article presents the results received after the analysis of observation diaries of 19 students containing information collected while observing the Burgundy snail. The pedagogical influence of such activities on development of students' scientific approach is also evaluated in the article.