A Study of the Biology Subject Matter Competency of Preservice and Inservice Biology Teachers

Author: Yeong-Jing Cheng, Bij-Chyi Hwang(Department of Biology, National Taiwan Normal University)

Abstract：

In this study, the Biology Subject-matter Competency Test (BSCT) was used to in-vestigate the biology subject-matter competency of the preservice (seniors) and inser-vice junior high biology teachers. The internal consistency reliability of the BSCT was 0.80 for the entire subjects. This value was much higher than that reported in the previous validation study in which students of preservice teacher education program were used as the subjects.
Results of the study revealed that preservice biology teachers scored significantly higher on BSCT than biology teachers (p<0.01). Biology teachers who were biology major during undergraduate study scored significantly higher on BSCT than those of non-biology majors (p<0.01). These findings were also found in three of the four sub-tests, namely, Molecular Biology, Botany, and Zoology. In the Ecology sub-test, both pre-service biology teachers and biology major teachers scored significantly higher than those of non-biology majors. However, no statistically significant difference was found between the BSCT scores obtained by preservice teachers and biology major teachers.
The results of data analysis further indicated that substantially marked positive correlations were found between biology subject matter competency scores and biology teaching competency scores. The subjects with higher biology subject matter compe-tency scored significantly better on BTCI (Biology Teaching Competency Inventory) than those with lower biology subject matter competency.

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