A Study on Ferns as Teaching Material

抄録

The Japanese national curriculum for elementary school and junior high school was reviewed in 1998 and that for senior high school was reviewed in 1999. The school hours and teaching contents were reduced by about 30% from the former curriculum. From a historical viewpoint, we examined the contents concerning “Ferns” in each version of the Japanese national curriculum and the science textbooks. Ferns were contained in some chapters in textbooks for both elementary and junior high school until the last revision. As a result of the latest revision of the textbooks, the fern was eliminated from the chapters “Investigating Plants in All Seasons” in elementary school and “Life of Plants and Their Kinds” in junior high school in which the fern had been contained. In almost all senior high school science textbooks, the fern has been used in the chapters “Structure” and “Life Cycle,” so we developed new teaching materials on fertilization and cell division, because experiments of fern were only culture of spore and observation of vascular system. As a result of new teaching materials, we found that ferns could also be used in other chapters besides “Structure” and “Life Cycle,” and we therefore can conclude that ferns are valuable plant material in biology education.