Investigation of preservice elementary and lower-secondary school teachersʼ experience and knowledge of wild weeds and grassses: Using photographs of wild weeds and grasses in a school science textbook.

Abstract

The purposes of this study are 1) to examine whether preservice elementary and lower-secondary school teachers have familiarity with using photographs of 16 kinds of wild weeds and grasses using their photographs in a lower-secondary school science textbook; 2) to investigate whether they know the names of the wild grasses shown in the textbook.　The fi ndings of this study were as follows: 1) less than 50% of the teachers had seen fi ve out of 16 kinds of the wild grasses; 2) less than 50% of them had touched nine out of 16 kinds of the grasses; 3)none of the teachers correctly wrote the names of the all kinds of grasses; and 4) none of them correctly wrote the names of five out of 16 kinds of the grasses.　The authors suggested some teaching strategies to improve the problems mentioned above.