2019 Volume 60 Issue 1 Pages 39-51
The main purpose of this study is to analyze elementary school students’ recognitions of the morphology of insects as drawn from the ventral side in the 2nd grade (before learning) and the 3rd grade (after learning), and to examine the perspective to foster children’s learning and skills development in science. The main findings of this study were as follows: 1) more than 60% of the 2nd grade students and more than 80% of the 3rd grade students could distinguish between insects and other living things (among nine kinds) ; and 2) none of the 2nd grade students and about 20% of the 3rd grade students divided morphology of six kinds of insects into three segments (head, thoracic, and abdomen) correctly, and the correct answer rates for each insect were less than 10% for the 2nd grade students and less than 65% among the 3rd grade students. The morphology of the six kinds of insects studied can be correctly classified into 4 types at the head, 9 types at the thoracic and 3 types at the abdomen; therefore, based on these results, we suggested that improvement in the teaching and learning strategies about the morphology of insects is necessary.
