2007 Volume 47 Issue 3 Pages 31-38
The purpose of this study is to determine the factors promoting enthusiasm in students in the fifth grade of elementary school, the second grade of lower secondary school, and the second grade of upper secondary school to observe independently the structure of the body and the ecology of underwater life. 343 fifth-grade elementary school students, 276 second-grade lower secondary school students, and 191 second-grade upper secondary school students responded to questionnaires. The results were as follows: (1) The most important factor encouraging such enthusiasm is "An intellectual urge to know about the structure of the body and the ecology of underwater life." Fifth-grade elementary school students listed three other factors: "An intellectual urge to pursue the dissection and to carve with a knife in animals," "Observations in an aquarium," and "A sense that they have acquired knowledge about the structure of the body and the ecology of underwater life." Second-grade lower secondary school students listed two other factors: "Intentional and unintentional education about the structure of the body and the ecology of underwater life by their own families and local people" and "Experience of Nature." (2) As years pass by, the factors promoting such enthusiasm converge in "The intellectual urge to know about the structure of the body and the ecology of underwater life." (3) As years pass by, students' enthusiasm to observe independently the structure of the body and the ecology of underwater life declines, which serious situation is caused by "The intellectual urge to know about the structure of the body and the ecology of underwater life" declines.
