Upper Secondary Students’ Recognition of Life History of Creatures―In the Case of the Recognition of Beetle’s Life History—

Abstract

When high school students study topics in biology such as development and heredity, it is very important for them to recognize the life history of creature. However, teachers have not given sufficient attention to this crucial aspect. We conducted an investigation to grasp how students recognize the life history of a familiar and popular creatures, the beetle. The results included the following three naive conceptions; (1) about half of the students surveyed answered “The Imago beetle hibernates”; (2) around 10% answered, “Young beetles live together with their parents”; (3) one even replied “In winter females hibernate, but males die”. We found that it is necessary to give adequate attention to the life history of creatures when preparing teaching materials when they study biological domain such as development and heredity.