A Study on Teaching Competency of Secondary School Biology Teachers

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

Abstract：

In this study, the Biology Teaching Competency Inventory (BTCI) is used to investi-gate the biology teaching competencies of pre- and in-service biology teachers. The in-ternal-consistency reliabilities of the BTCI and two subtests are 0.81, 0.80, and 0.64, re-spectively. The values are slightly lower than those reported in the development and val-idation study.
Data analysis reveals that preservice biology teachers score significantly higher on BTCI than inservice biology teachers (p<0.01). Biology teachers who were biology ma-jor during their undergraduate study score significantly higher on BTCI than nonbiology majors (p<0.05). These findings are also true for the two BTCI subtests. These results indicate that the biology teaching competencies of biology-major teachers are better than those of non-biology-majors. Oneway ANOVA shows that there are significant dif-ferences of the BTCI scores among three groups of subjects, namely, preservice teachers, biology-major and non-biology-major teachers. The biology teaching compe-tencies of preservice biology teachers are better than those of biology- and non-biology-major biology teachers.
The results of the study further indicate that moderate to low correlations exist be-tween biology teaching competency and biology inquiry skills and understanding of the nature of science, respectively. That is, subjects who possess better biology teaching competencies also show better biology inquiry skills and better understanding of the na-ture of science. In addition, the BTCI scores correlate positively with Q preference mode scores, and negatively with R preference mode scores in a biology cognitive pref-erence assessment.

Keywords：Biology Teching Competency, Biology Teachers, Biology Inquiry Skills, Understanding Nature of Science, Biology Cognitive Preferences

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