Views of Biology Teacher Candidates about Context Based Approach

Abstract

Biology is one of the courses that explain natural events. However, in literature there are some studies claiming that the association level of students between daily life events and biology subjects is very low. Contest-based approach is described as the starting point for the development of scientific ideas in science teaching. In this approach real-life contexts are used to introduce concepts. The purpose of this study is to determine biology teacher candidates' view about context based approach. In this study the qualitative research method was used and the participants of this study consist of 14 volunteer senior teacher candidates from the division of biology education in Hacettepe University. A questionnaire was used as a data collection tool. The collected data was analyzed by using the content analysis method. In the light of the results, it is determined that the biology teacher candidates has some lack of knowledge about context based approach and it should be improved by using the context based approach activity in courses at university level so that the teachers candidates should be aware of with guides about context based approach. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of Academic World Education and Research Center.