In Malawi, the new Biology curriculum draws from constructivist approaches. The Biology
teaching syllabus emphasises the use of students’ experiences as a resource and the use of
active student involvement strategies when teaching the curriculum to enhance conceptual
understanding. However, inspection reports show that students are less actively involved in the
lessons and the teachers rarely draw from their students’ prior experiences to enhance
conceptual understanding.
In this study, I investigated some factors affecting four teachers’ use of constructivist approaches
when teaching the new biology curriculum in Malawi. Information was collected on the four
teachers’ understandings of active student involvement in lessons and students’ experiences,
the extent to which the four teachers involved students and built on students’ experiences to
enable comprehension of science concepts in the Biology lessons and the factors that promoted/
hindered the use of these practices. Data was collected through lesson observations and
interviews with teachers using an observation guide and an interview schedule respectively.
Four Biology teachers, two from community secondary schools and two from conventional
secondary schools were observed and interviewed.
I found that all the four teachers understood students’ experiences as prior knowledge from
previous school learning. The teachers understood active student involvement in relation to the type of schools they were teaching. For the teachers in community schools, involving students
meant engaging them in group discussion while to the teachers in conventional schools it meant
students doing experiments / practical work. Their teaching focused on giving information and
little was done to develop students’ metacognitive abilities. According to the four teachers,
pressure to cover the syllabus before the national examinations; lack of text books and
laboratory equipment; lack of motivation among students; students’ backgrounds; and
inadequate students’ fluency in the English language are some of the factors that affect their
implementation of the constructivist approaches. Based on the lessons I observed, the teachers’
knowledge of subject matter and teachers’ understandings of the constructivism concept also
affect the use of constructivist approaches when teaching Biology in Malawi.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/9099 |
| Date | 25 February 2011 |
| Creators | Mdolo, Margaret Malizgani |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf, application/pdf |
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