Meaningful learning is where the learner actively integrates new knowledge to his or her existing knowledge base. It involves the use of cognitive strategies and self-regulation. What motivates a learner to do so is found to be related to variables like the motivational beliefs, personal goal orientation and affect as well as the perception towards the teacher and his or her classroom context. The study surveyed a group of S6 biology students to examine the correlations between some of the different variables noted above. Students learning of cell division and inheritance is investigated to find out how pedagogy involving hybrid dynamic visualization (integration of dynamic animations to a static diagram) may promote meaningful learning. Two teachers, a subject teacher and a tutor, taught the same topics to the same group. The perception towards these two teachers and their classroom contexts were compared to see how much their perceptions were correlated to the student’s motivational beliefs, personal goal orientation, self-regulated learning behaviour and affect. The findings of the study support previous research that students relate their motivational beliefs and goal orientations to the cognitive strategy used. Besides, female students relate their personal goal orientations, self-regulated learning behavior and emotions to teachers of either gender more than male counterparts. The tutor and her classroom context have been perceived as more mastery goal oriented which aligns with the motivational beliefs and personal goal orientation of the students, whereas the subject teacher is perceived as one with a mixture of both mastery and performance goals and this has no statistical correlation with students’ motivational beliefs, achievement goal orientation or self-regulated learning strategies. The pedagogy seemed to more successfully help students master the concepts of cell division and inheritance and apply them to solve genetics problems compared with traditional teaching. Individual interviews, however, shows that the relevant skills of reasoning are yet to be improved. To conclude, a classroom with a mastery goal orientation through carefully designed pedagogy may promote meaningful learning. / published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

Cell division is a topic widely recognized by biology teachers for its importance in the curriculum. However, it is also regarded by teachers and students as a very difficult topic. Students at different school levels often hold many misconceptions in cell divisions. While diagrams have been so commonly employed in biology textbooks to enhance the textual representation of cell divisions, the researcher of this study questioned about the cognitive role of the diagrams in helping students construct new concepts of cell divisions, as well as students’ competence in learning from the diagrams. This exploratory study was conducted to investigate how secondary school students made use of textbook diagrams to gain new information about cell divisions, if and how the diagrams induced misconceptions in students, the problems students encountered when interpreting the diagrams and captions, and their perceptions of the usefulness of diagrams in learning cell divisions specifically and biology in general. Twenty-two secondary four students took part in this study. They were provided with a textbook illustration of mitotic and meiotic cell divisions, consisting of schematic diagrams and captions, for self-study. Data was collected from the students’ performance on a task sheet and their responses in individual interview. The task sheet assessed the new concepts (and/or misconceptions) constructed by the students through their (mis-)interpretation of the diagrams and captions in the illustration. The individual interview probed deeper into the students’ cognitive processing of the information in the illustration. Results showed that the students were able to employ different strategies to interpret the diagrams and captions to construct new knowledge to solve problems in the task sheet. However, they also showed weaknesses and problems in interpreting the diagrams. The problems included superficial processing of diagrams, lack of awareness and skills of interpreting diagram conventions, misinterpretation of temporal relationship among different diagrams or different diagram components. As a result, a number of misconceptions on cell divisions were detected among the students. These included misconceptions related to: (1) changes in chromosome number in cell divisions, (2) crossing over occurring at metaphase I of meiosis, and chromosome arrangement at metaphase I. The study also found that students generally perceived diagrams useful for learning cell divisions, but not for learning biology in general. They seemed to have underestimated the functions of textbook diagrams in representing biology concepts and undervalued the roles that diagrams may play in assessment of their understanding of biological concepts. The research findings contribute to the literature on misconceptions of cell divisions by uncovering students’ misinterpretation of specific kinds of diagrams as the origin of their learning difficulties. The findings also contribute to the growing literature on students’ visual perception and the power of diagrams for learning from science textbooks. Recommendations were made for textbook authors to improve design of diagrams illustrating scientific concepts, for teachers to equip students with visual literacy skills to learn from diagrams, and for teacher trainers to provide relevant training to pre-service and in-service teachers. Some suggestions for further research were also discussed. / published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

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Ph.D. (Education) / This research focused on two short learning programmes in evolution education offered by the Department of Science and Technology Education in the Faculty of Education of the University of Johannesburg. The broad purpose of the study was to develop design principles for a series of short learning programmes on evolution offered by the University. In achieving these aims, the study looked at teachers’ conceptual understanding of evolution, which included a number of common myths and misconceptions; folk or naive evolutionary explanations; and affective and sociocultural factors that influence cognition. Results were obtained from questionnaires, narratives, observations, discussion, and pre-and post-tests. A fruitful analytic tool was developed – that of converting questionnaire responses into narratives in order to obtain a better within participant view of coherent versus fragmented thinking. Some the themes that emerged included the cognitive bias of essentialism and how this relates to the notion of phenomenological primitives or p-prims, and the mechanism of resubsumption. "Hot" and "cold" learning and the critical issues of both religious and racial objections to evolution emerged as a fairly dominant theme. Data also supported a view of knowledge-as-pieces rather than theory-like in this knowledge domain. Poor teacher knowledge and the need for longer learning programmes, are also discussed in the results. To mitigate these conceptual and affective barriers, a number of design principles are proposed and discussed for teacher professional development in this area including the importance of communities of practice to augment short learning programmes and support on-going professional development.

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高國威. / 據手稿本影印. / Thesis (M.A.)--香港中文大學硏究院敎育學部. / Ju shou gao ben ying yin. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [1-16] (3rd group)). / Gao Guowei. / Thesis (M.A.)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue yan jiu yuan jiao yu xue bu. / 引言 --- p.1-10 / Chapter 第一章 --- 緒論：背景資料 / Chapter 第一節 --- 生物學在中國之發展 --- p.11-20 / Chapter 第二節 --- 生物學在中國中學課程中的發展情況 --- p.21-32 / Chapter 第三節 --- 近期國外中學生物科課程介紹 --- p.33-48 / Chapter 第二章 --- 研究方法 / Chapter 第一節 --- 研究目的 --- p.54-55 / Chapter 第二節 --- 各時期的劃分 --- p.56-59 / Chapter 第三節 --- 比較的範圍 --- p.59-63 / Chapter 第四節 --- 資料搜集 --- p.64-69 / Chapter 第三章 --- 1949年至1966年中學生物課程開設情況的介紹和分析 / Chapter 第一節 --- 1952年 至 1958年 --- p.71-86 / Chapter 第二節 --- 1958年 至 1962年 --- p.86-98 / Chapter 第三節 --- 1963年 至 1966年 --- p.99-113 / Chapter 第四章 --- 1967年至1977年中學生物課程開設情況的介紹和分析 --- p.121-141 / Chapter 第五章 --- 1978年至現今中學生物課程開設情況的介紹和分析 / Chapter 第一節 --- 1978年 至 1981年 --- p.142-164 / Chapter 第二節 --- 1982年 至 現今 --- p.165-177 / Chapter 第六章 --- 1949年以來各時期中學生物科課程的比較 / Chapter 第一節 --- 各時期生物教學的目標和意義 --- p.183-193 / Chapter 第二節 --- 各時期的中學生物科課程內容 --- p.194-203 / Chapter 第三節 --- 各時期生物科教學實況及社會配合情況 --- p.203-210 / Chapter 第七章 --- 影響中國中學生物科課程的因素 --- p.215-235 / Chapter 第八章 --- 總結 / Chapter 第一節 --- 綜合結論 --- p.239-244 / Chapter 第二節 --- 建議─對中國中學生物科課程的展望 --- p.245-258 / 附錄一 --- p.259-260 / 參攷資料 --- p.261

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This quantitative study examined the differential effectiveness of inquiry and expository methods of instruction in terms of pupils' understanding of 'the human circulatory system and pupils' attitudes towards biology as a subject at school. The sample used in the study consisted of 64 Standard Eight Biology pupils from a Pretoria high schooL The "inquiry group" comprised 35 pupils and the "expository group' 29 pupils. The research procedure included the development of an inquiry "teaching package" dealing with the human circulatory system, designing a Test of Understanding and selecting an appropriate Attitude Towards School Biology Test. The "package" and the testing instruments were pilot tested before being used in the main study. Two research designs were used in this study. To compare the levels of pupils' understanding of the inquiry and expository groups a Posttest-only with Nonequivalent groups was used, whilst an Untreated Control Group Design with Pretest and Posttest was used for the comparison of pupils' attitudes towards biology as a school subject. An Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) revealed no significant differences in pupils' understanding of the circulatory system between the inquiry and expository groups. There were also no significant differences between the two groups in terms of pupils' understanding when comparing Higher Grade and Standard Grade pupils separately. ANCOVA revealed no significant differences between the inquiry and expository groups in pupils' attitudes towards biology as a school subject. A Chi-square test revealed that a significantly larger number of pupils in the inquiry group responded favourably to the statement "Biology is fascinating and fun". A Chi-square test, however, revealed no significant differences between the two groups in terms of responses to the statements "During Biology class, I usually am interested", and "Biology is interesting to me and I enjoy it". / Andrew Chakane 2018