Abstract:

A major goal in biology education is to develop Biological Literacy (BL). BL has been conceptualized in the last century by Uno and Bybee [1]. The authors of this proposal have defined and created a theoretical model of BL and they state that this is an interdisciplinary concept, including biological content knowledge and core concepts, biological cognitive skills, nature of biology, positive values and attitudes towards biology, biology-related career etc. that enables students’ as future citizenships’ to adapt with their future lives [2]. A major intention in highlighting BL as a separate concept is to meet the citizens’ need to cope with a rapidly changing world and to use their biological content knowledge and skills in everyday situations, like making justified decisions regarding their health. There have been studies of measuring BL ([3]; [4]) which focus only on some aspects of BL, but there is not one instrument which measures it entirely. The goal of this study is to create a complex instrument of BL to determine the influence of Estonian competence-based biology curriculum [5] on gymnasium students’ cognitive and affective aspects of BL, including their self-perception and awareness about different biology-related career opportunities.

The sample for this study was formed of 134 18–19 years old students, graduating Gymnasium. The instrument of the study consisted of 3 parts. The first part (8 items) of the instrument measured students’ cognitive skills and consisted of open-ended questions; the second part (25 items) of the instrument measured the students’ biological content knowledge with the multiple-choice questions. The third part of the instrument (32 items) measured students’ self-perception of their cognitive skills, opinions of biology teaching and career preferences at a 4-point Likert scale. The instrument was validated by 3 independent biology education experts and the reliability coefficient Cronbach’s Alpha was 0.85.

The preliminary descriptive statistics analysis revealed that the gymnasium graduating students’ transformative cognitive skills were at a higher level compared to their biological content knowledge. The further data analysis will involve (in the paper) Latent Profile Analysis and Rasch Analysis in order to get more detailed information about the students’ BL level and the effectiveness of the created complex instrument of BL.

References:
[1] E.G. Uno and W.R. Bybee. Understanding the Dimensions of Biological Literacy, in BioScience, vol. 44, no 8, pp. 553–557, 1994.
[2] Author1, Author2. Reconceptualising Biological Literacy to Provide Wider Focus for Biology Education, 17 p., (Manuscript submitted for publication), 2019.
[3] G. Brill, H. Falk and A. Yarden. The learning processes of two high-school biology students when reading primary literature, in Journal of Science Education, vol. 26, no 4, pp. 497–512, 2004.
[4] F.C. Weber. Microgreen Farming and Nutrition: A Discovery-Based Laboratory Module to Cultivate Biological and Information Literacy in Undergraduates, in The American Biology Teacher, vol. 79, no 5, 375–386, 2017.
[5] Estonian Curriculum.National Curriculum for basic schools and upper secondary schools, In Regulation of the Government of the Republic of Estonia, RT l, 14.01.2011.

Keywords:

Biological literacy, students' achievement, instrument.