Secondary school teachers’ perceptions of practical work in Biology in the Oshana Educational Region

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the Biology teachers’ perceptions of the importance of practical work in selected secondary schools in the Oshana Education Region (OER). The study also sought to find out whether the selected secondary schools in the OER had all the necessary resources needed to conduct meaningful practical lessons in Biology. This study sought to answer the following research questions: What are the Secondary School teachers’ perceptions of the importance of practical work in Biology in Oshana Education Region?, and Do Secondary Schools in Oshana education region have all the necessary resources for conducting practical lessons in Biology? This study was situated in the qualitative and quantitative research paradigms. The population consisted of all Biology teachers at Grade 11 and 12 levels in OER. Eight Secondary Schools in the OER were randomly selected to take part in this study. A sample comprising 23 Biology teachers was chosen purposively from the 8 Secondary Schools. A questionnaire and an observation schedule were used to collect the data from the sample. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse quantitative data and included frequency tables, graphs and pie charts. Qualitative data were categorised into themes that emerged from the data. The findings showed that 69.9% of the Biology teachers did not have a laboratory specifically for conducting Biology practicals and carried out their practicals in a common laboratory, used for both Physical Science and Biology or in their classrooms. Two of the nine teachers observed did not bother to carry out practical work and taught Biology theoretically which disadvantaged learners on Paper 3, alternative to course work paper. The findings also showed that 66.6% of the teachers did not carry out practicals in Biology. They claimed to be doing so, but in actual sense there were not much practical work taking place in those schools. Four out of the six observed teachers were doing demonstrations only. The findings also showed that the materials necessary for carrying out practical work were not available in the Biology classrooms or laboratories. This was evident from the non-availability of practical manuals for both teachers and learners resulting in the use of teacher made hand-outs. This situation needs to be seriously addressed if practical work is to become popular among the learners and the teachers in the OER in Namibia. The Ministry of Education through Biology Advisory Teachers should seriously address the lack of laboratory space and laboratory resources to ensure the conduct of practicals in schools in the OER. Biology Teachers should be encouraged to borrow materials for conducting practicals from neighbouring schools in cases where their schools do not have the necessary resources for conducting practicals in Biology.