Biology student teachers’ ideas about purpose of laboratory work

It is expected that students taking biology classes should be interested in science and should know the methods used by scientists in scientific research. However, many studies conducted on biology teaching since the 1980’s show that no matter how the curriculum programs are changed, most of the students develop incorrect purposes regarding biology subjects and graduate with misconceptions about biological phenomena (Wandersee et al., 1994). Currently, new research is constantly being conducted to enable students to learn more efficiently. The importance of laboratory work in the learning biology and increasing students’ interest in biology cannot be denied. It is for this reason that laboratory work is conducted in most university level biology classes. However, in order to reach the expected outcomes from laboratory work, a suitable laboratory instruction approach must be selected and implemented. There are many approaches related to laboratory instruction. The results of the present study show that the purposes identified by the biology student teachers reflect the traditional, deductive or cook-book approaches. Therefore, alternative approaches such as inquiry-based laboratory must be brought to the foreground. For example, Domin (2007), in addition to the traditional expository instructional method, touches on the three instruction styles in common use: discovery (guided-inquiry), inquiry (open-inquiry) and problem-based. Although these alternative styles are generally gathered under the single rule of non-traditional instruction, each one is different and places the student in a unique learning environment. Students’ efforts must be given a definite direction with closed- and open-ended experiments. However, in teaching biology, studies with open-ended experiments (Bayraktar et al., 2006; Cepni & Ayvaci, 2006) are observed to be more useful, as in these experiments the carrying out of the operations, the interpretation, the gleaning of results, the presentation of factual hypotheses and generalizations are entirely up to the student. In addition, learning environments that make it necessary for students to take an active role in laboratory work and to make discoveries must be established. In such environments, the role of the teacher is not just to transfer packaged knowledge directly to the students; the teacher’s role is to encourage students in problem solving. During this process, realized under the supervision of the teacher, new knowledge is discovered in the laboratory. This knowledge can later be used in other lessons as a basic concept. Time must be set aside for discussions, both before and after the experimentations in laboratory implementations, as discussions aid in adding to incomplete knowledge and in discovering new knowledge.