engleski

The Influence of Group Work in Biology Teaching on the Quality and Permanency of Knowledge Depending on Students' Abilities

The research of group work and cooperative learning show its positive influence on acquiring learning contents and improvement of attitudes regarding education (Springer et al., 1999 ; Johnson et al., 2000). Apart from establishing how higher– quality and permanent knowledge is acquired during group work by students in biology teaching compared to frontal teaching methods, the goal of the research was to compare the results of students of different intellectual abilities in group work. The research was conducted on an accidental sample of 227 high school students divided into a control (K=134 students) and experimental (E=93) group. The samples are harmonised by means of Raven's progressive matrices (Raven, (1962). A month after the classes during which group E intensively used inquiry-based learning during group work, and group K a frontal lecture-type teaching with dialogue, the first testing was conducted, followed by another one 6 months later. The research conducted so far shows that cooperative learning methods are more successful than the traditional ones, and they also improve social components (Slavin, 1995). In addition to these benefits, cooperative learning has been associated with improved attitudes toward subject matter, increased interest in schooling, expanded student– faculty interaction, improved classroom behaviour and climate, and the development of life-long learning skills (CLC, 2003 ; Johnson, 1989). Our research has shown that there are statistically significant differences in knowledge between the students who used group work and those who were taught frontally, particularly in the part of the test which asked for higher knowledge levels and knowledge application, in favour of group E (t-Stat=4, 7342). As for permanency of knowledge, the comparison of the first and the second testing show fewer differences in group E, whereas the results of group K are significantly weaker. The results of only high above-average students according to the Raven's matrices show test results percentage of 74.8% in group E for the first testing, and 80.0% in group K. The results of group E for the second testing stay almost the same, 72.8%, whereas in group K they fall to 61.6%. This speaks in favour of the thesis that group work is good for high above-average students and that it improves the permanence of their knowledge. The students of weaker average results in the first testing achieve better results in group E (67.6%) than in group K (61.2%). However, in the second testing a roughly equal decline for both groups is noticed. The students with lower average results achieve better results when being taught by group work than frontally, but the permanence of the acquired knowledge is not increased as it can be seen with high above-average students.

cooperative learning; student`s competence; group work

nije evidentirano