an innovative approach

2. Background Information about Mr. Vyn
2.1) Educational Background and Teaching Experience
In 1978, Mr. Vyn was a beginning teacher, a senior high school biology
teacher, at the Market School. He was now forty nine years old, and had taught about
advanced photosynthesis in Grade 11 for twenty six years. He graduated with a
Bachelor of Education (Biology Teaching) degree and a Master of Science (Botany)
degree. In this semester, he was going to teach about Grade 11 advanced biology, but
was not going to teach about Grade 11 basic/introductory biology. Mr. Vyn also
taught about science in Grade 7 and scout association in Grades 7 through 9. Totally,
Mr. Vyn had twenty one periods a week.
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Mr. Vyn would like to teach biology because he preferred to study living
things, nature and environment. Mr. Vyn perceived understanding of nature of
science as understanding of natural laws of science, and was confident in his strong
content knowledge in biology. He adopted a self style of presenting biology contents
by rearranging the contents order and using transparency to support his lecture.
However, he felt constrained by the school policy which assigned teachers to teach in
too many periods a week in the school and a large number of students in the
classroom.
2.2) Mr. Vyn’s Students Information
There were forty Grade 11 students, thirteen boys and twenty seven girls,
in Mr. Vyn’s three periods on Monday and Friday. Twenty one were aged sixteen,
sixteen were aged seventeen, two were aged eighteen and one was aged fifteen. Mr.
Vyn described the class as a high competent student. They had highest average of all
class in Grade 11. Most of his students were above average. Their biology
achievement score was 2.90 averagely (Table 5.6). Nobody studied biology with
private tutorials. The students’ opinion towards the biology learning varied
considerably. Nineteen would like to learn biology for their everyday life, nine would