Teaching Genetics in the Public Secondary Schools in Cluster Iii, Division of Pampanga

Abstract

Introduction

Genetics is an area of biology that is organized in methodology and understanding and has multiple levels of difficulty that can make teaching a challenge. It is considered the most disliked topic in Biology among high school students because it is difficult and abstract. Studies have mentioned the growing importance of Genetics and its ever-widening influence within our lives was pointed out. Learning Genetics, however, is characterized by learning difficulties and misconceptions. It is a challenging task for every Biology teacher to make learning genetics interesting, easy and enjoyable for their students. There is a need to look deeper into how teachers encourage and challenge their students to become interested in genetics and provide some guidelines in improving genetic teaching especially to those teachers who find difficulty in teaching the subject especially to Non-biology major teachers, these reasons prompted the researcher to conduct this study.

Methods

The study made use of the descriptive method of research using a questionnaire as the main instrument and an unstructured interview for verification. The data gathered were organized, tallied, tabulated and subjected to statistical treatment utilizing frequency counts, percentage, ranking, weighted mean, T-test, F-test and Scheffe’s test.

Results

Science teachers used a concrete and practical application to motivate their students in learning such abstract subjects and frequently use a variety of teaching methods to engage students in the learning process and help them develop critical thinking skills and frequently use learner-centered approaches in teaching genetics. Respondents utilize a wide selection of techniques and are nontraditional in terms of instructional materials in teaching genetics. Results indicate that Science teachers are employing a variety of ways to assess to find out if their students attained the lesson objectives. The majority of the respondents find the topic “Replication, Transcription, and Translation”, “Genetic Mutation” and “Genetic coding” difficult.

Discussions

Science teachers must provide opportunities for students to connect with the complexity of lesson in a variety of meaningful ways by using the concrete and practical application, interactive activities, experiments, engaging assessments, and other active learning strategies that are more learner-centered, that promote interaction among students to help individual students become clear about their understanding.