Methods And Materials For Teaching Biological Sciences

METHODS AND MATERIALS FOR TEACHING BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES A Text and Source Book for Teachers in Training and in Service BY DAVID F. MILLER Associate Professor of Zoology and Supervisor of Teacher Training in the Biological Sciences The Ohio State University AND GLENN W. BLAYDES Associate Professor of Botany, The Ohio State University McGRAW-HILL BOOK COMPANY, INC. NEW YORK AND LONDON 1938 COPYRIGHT, 1938, BY THE McGRAW-HiLL BOOK COMPANY, INC. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission of the publishers. THE MAPLE PRESS COMPANY, YORK, PA, PREFACE This book has been prepared for the teachers of elementary courses in the biological sciences ranging from junior high school to junior college. It was written in direct response to a frequently expressed need voiced by those teachers themselves and by teachers in training for this field. It has been the hope of the authors that it might aid in the accomplishment of four aims. First, to encourage the teachers of biological subjects to abandon the all too common method of teaching from the textbook with little use of materials. Second, to assist the teacher in locating, securing, or culturing living and interesting materials at little expense. Third, to suggest how these materials may be used in classroom demonstrations and student projects, as well as how simple, homemade, and inexpensive apparatus and devices may solve the persistent problem of lack of equipment or funds. Fourth, to foster, through suggestion, the use of the problem and project method in order to give to the student not merely biological information but also practice in using thisinformation in the understanding of principles and the application of these principles to his daily life. In order to make the book most useful to both teachers in service and teachers in training it has been divided in to t wo parts. Although Part I is suitable for the general reading of the biology teacher it is designed primarily as a text for classes in special methods. It is not assumed that the ten chapters devoted to this part should be an exhaustive study of the problems of biology teaching, but they do cover those questions especially which accumulated recorc have shown to be those most frequently asked by student teachers. Furthermore, it is intended that this part, if carried out as designed, shall constitute a complete special-methods course in the field. This cannot be accom plished alone by a series of lectures or a period of reading in this or any other book, but requires that the prospective teacher be given the oppor tunity of participating directly in some of those activities which are required of him when he is out on the job. This may be done most efficiently through the consistent use of the problems which are given with each chapter. These problems are not review questions such as one usually finds appended to chapters in texts. They are problems of teaching which, though they have some bearing upon the subject of the chapter, are not answered by it, but may be worked out largely by use of the material furnished in Part II. vi PREFACE If the teacfier of the methods class will assign one or more students to each of these problems, allowing at least a week for preparation, and will have these solutions presented in class for the discussion and benefit of all, it willbe found that a very useful and enlivened class period will result. The reading of the text and of any of the suggested references may very well be done as outside work. There is but little doubt that the reason so many teachers leave our training schools with the feel ing of not knowing what it is all about is that they have spent their time reading theory and listening to lectures without ever having an opportunity of translating this into the practical terms of the schoolroom and the problems with which they must deal later...