EFFECTIVENESS OF CONCEPT MAPPING STRATEGY FOR ENHANCING LEARNING PERFORMANCE in LIFE SCIENCE AND SCIENTIFIC REASONING ABILITY

Abstract

Teaching and learning in biology is difficult because of its unfamiliar concepts and inappropriate newlinetechniques used in the classroom. Researches in biology education have produced a vast body of newlineliterature but very few changes have occurred in the secondary school classroom. The problems newlineare twofold. First, the highly conceptual nature of biology seems to be difficult for most of the newlinestudents and the techniques used during classroom transaction have not encouraged learning newlineprocess. Second, recommendations made on improved biology teaching encourages adoption of newlineindividualized instruction (Douglas, 1979) which is costly and practically difficult to implement. newlineBiology instruction has a increasing discrepancies between what students able to learn and what newlinestudents should learn in schools (Good and Brophy, 1987). The practical applicability in day to day newlinelife is apparent. But the growing failure rate on national examination is also not acceptable. The newlinereport of National Achievement Survey (NAS, 2021) conducted by National Council for newlineEducational Research and Training (NCERT), Government of India, depicts that performance of newlineClass-X students of Odisha falls below than the national average in the subject Science. Thus, newlineefforts for rectification of the situation have been aimed for developing a better biology newlinecurriculum. A process approach to teaching biology that has been popular in classroom teaching is newlinethe inquiry method. The approach requires students to enquire about the causes of problem and newline