A Book Study

                Life Science’s Biology Book between Advantages
                                    and Disadvantages

Introduction:

The educational system in Lebanon, after being improved through the last part in education has shown a great difference and a great shift from fact-based curriculum to a more concept-based one. From this point they were working on a new curricula, so that it depends on understanding and establishing the explanation from a given figure instead of memorizing, by that they are working on a higher level of thinking under the title of Blooms taxonomy.

The Center of Educational Research and Development (CERD) embarked an extensive workshop for assessing and improving the education framework and curricula that will work on stimulating the creation of students, through emphasizing understanding. So as a part of the new curriculum, the experts in this domain were working harder, in choosing figures and skills related to their academic level, knowing that they’ll be able to master it.

Throughout this research we are going to shed the light on two main domains, the design of the book as a structure, and the content of this book, dealing with the skills introduced, national standards of this curriculum, figures, texts, exercises and many others, where it is important to focus on both, positives and negatives, and finally the recommendations and few changes that could be done for the success of this educational process.

 So after all this improvement in the educational process, did the curricula improve to the maximum or still having few problems that require researches and work in order to achieve the required success?  

Discussion:

Throughout this research we are going to shed the light on the secondary education, exactly of the third year, the life sciences section. The book to dissect in this research is the biology book which was published by the Center for Educational Research and Development, 2002. It is considered the national book, which is from the new curriculum.

Structure of the book:

According to the design of the book as structure, it’s done with high quality papers that are soft to touch, interesting to look at, and relaxing for the vision. This book is a new edition, which must be with less mistakes, it contains 19 chapters with 392 pages.  In addition to that the book is divided into 5 parts, genetics and sexual reproduction, immunology, neurophysiology, systems of regulation and evolution. Each part is sub-divided into chapters, and the chapters into activities. All are shown in details in the table of contents at the beginning of the book. After the table of content, the 1^st pat starts with an introduction and a photo, that allow students to think more and establish new ideas and questions to be answered throughout this unit, in addition to the chapters of this unit. Starting with the first chapter, with a brief introduction and figures that allow student to imagine what the chapter is about, followed by questions to be solved and understood throughout the chapter, and finally the titles of documents at the bottom of the page. Each document starts with a 2-3 lines introduction and many questions raised     to be solved, and it is made up of different figures and little explanation, ending up the document with a yellow table which consists of many questions answered throughout the figures, and serves as a guide to the teacher, to follow in her instruction. At the end of the chapter, a summing up, shows explanation for every single document introduced in this chapter, followed by a concept map which is a visual summary for the chapter. Finally an exercises part appears with questions varying from multiple choices, true/false, labeling knowledge, analysis, critical thinking and many other types.

At the end of the book, there is about 10 pages section called glossary and it contains the definition of the main concepts introduced in all the chapters.

Dealing with the above observations, some are important and helpful for the students and some are negative and must be changed for the coming generations. Starting with the papers of the book, they are of good quality and this is a good point, but this book contains 392 pages which is too heavy to carry, knowing that this book requires a copy book for the bulk of information, in addition to that this subject is given 6 periods per week in the ministry of education, but schools give 7 periods per week, so by that students must carry this book approximately every day.

Furthermore this book contains 5 parts, in which only four are taught, and the evolution part is canceled. So they can remove it from the book to avoid these carriage problems. Moving to the Glossary, which is found at the end of the book, and I found by chance, knowing that it is important to have it in every book because it explains the new concepts, but it’s more important the location of it, so it must be changed to be fragmented, and every glossary attached to its main document, making it easier for student to focus on.

Content of the book:

According to the curriculum, it’s required to take a look on the CERD standards in order to teach this book, but what was observable is that some of the standards required in the CERD aren’t given in schools, so whose fault is this! For example, the population genetics is included in the curriculum and canceled in the teaching process. So instead of focusing on such unwanted standards, they can work harder to improve the required ones.

The passage through the lesson starts by introducing the lesson and by that triggering the cognition of the students, encouraging their participation, by that they’ll be wider thinkers and know what they’re responsible to do.  After that we can observe the figures introduced, these figures are essential in the process of learning, since at this level grade, students are the facilitators who explain, and here the role of the teacher is to guide them. So the lesson is made up of figures experiments that are highly applicable, since students can work on, and simplify through different skills such as analyzing, describing, and interpreting. An observable point in this book was the figures, in which all the skills could be applied on the same figure. For example, page 114 the first figure which is about the different types of skin graft, the explanation of this figure can be done through different levels of thinking such as analyzing, interpreting, hypothesis, and the process can vary from the low level of thinking to the higher one, knowing that the book is designed for the student to explore the documents, and establish the information, and after that there is a summing up at the end of the chapter that explains the documents and the main concepts introduced. In addition to the important way the exercises are stated, in which they are varied from one type to another, for example, this figure about skin graft is shown as a table with different experiments as one type to work on, and through the exercises, it is given in a different way in a graph form. One important point here is that in the document for example they introduce about one blood group type, and in order to insure that students understood it, an exercise was given at the end of the chapter, containing a table with all types of blood groups to show the acceptance and the rejection of the blood transfusion.

This book, from an exercises point of view, it’s a rich one, in which every document carries different questions under the title of probing the activity and this simplify the method of explanation, moving to the exercises at the end of the chapter, this bulk of exercises that vary to all the levels of  thinking, in which we can observe questions that check for memorizing, such us true/false, multiple choices question, matching and others, in addition to higher levels of questions that require thinking and more creation.

Throughout this year of grade 12, different teachers teach different ways, some teachers pass on the chapters as they appear in the table of content, while others prefer to join related ones together such as the unit of reproduction and genetics with the chapter of birth control. Furthermore, some of the information such as lymph node is given in this book, just passing on without figures and important explanation, so teachers pass on without concentrating on, and one of the official exams carry a long question about it, so the students get confused, and didn’t know what to do.

Finally, the most negative aspect in this book, is that all the students will have by the end of the year an official exam and teachers focus on dictating the answers from the teachers guide, knowing that it’s not their fault, since the exams are corrected according to the law of all or none, so all students must write the same answer of the answer key, by that allowing teachers to focus on memorizing instead of creating and understanding.  

Recommendations:

In order to improve this educational process, it’s required to focus on this curriculum so that we can reach the highest levels of understanding, with the right to express in the way they understood, not similar to the answer key. So experts must take into consideration the following recommendations:

- Adding a concept map at the beginning of every chapter so that the students will know the itinerary, and where the lesson is going, in addition to changing the concept map at the end of every chapter into a summary map.

- Removing the unwanted chapters such as the evolution in which it’s found through all the editions, and usually they print it for no important purpose, knowing that if we said that students can read it for general information, exactly in this year they have no time for such a purpose.  It must be removed so that students don’t carry this heavy book, or another solution for the bulk of chapters and activities that are cancelled is substituting it with extra exercises, for students to work on as a guide for them to improve their skills, or it can be by selecting the nice questions from the official exams and adding it to the book so that students can practice more without the need to buy extra guides to improve.

- with respect to the time given for this subject, which is 6 periods per week, which is very little for the whole of the year, some schools are giving 7 periods per week and they aren’t enough to cover the required content. So it’s necessary to find a solution, either through reducing the amount of content required, or by giving it extra time from other subjects.

- Glossary is stated at the end of the book, and this is not efficient, since no one will look for it, and none will observe its presence, so it’s better to state related definitions with their related document, by that it will be easier to understand.

- But as I remember when I was in grade 12 is that the teacher in her first period, wrote on the board “Law of all or none” to inform us that the goal of this book is to memorize because in official exams they correct according to one common answer from all student and this minimize the creativity of students, so this must be changed since one question, may carry many and many different answers.

Conclusion:

Finally I found this book interesting to deal with, with its bulk of figures and documents; related to students level, but it must be revised first with respect to time, because these interesting documents and huge number requires more than one year, if we want to focus on covering and understanding at the same time. In addition to that the way this understanding is evaluated is wrong, since all students are valued to one limited answer and this will kill the student’s creativity.