an innovative approach

teaching periods, covering a total of four weeks. The students were taught three
periods per week.
The evaluation used three case studies which were concerned with one
classroom in each of three schools. The researcher plays a role as a facilitator who
cooperatively encourages practitioners i.e. three biology teachers trialing the new
photosynthesis lessons to reflect on their own actions i.e. their teaching.
The impact of the photosynthesis lessons was monitored with observations,
pre-and post-surveys, and interviews. The biology teachers and the Grade 11 students
were observed during every teaching period. The three biology teachers were
interviewed informally to reflect their own teaching after each observation. Pre- and
post- surveys including unstructured interviews were used to review the students’
understanding of photosynthesis. After the students responded completely, four
students in each class, they were a total of twelve students in this research, were
purposively selected to probe their understandings through the interviews.
The next section described the biology teachers and Grade 11 students as
subjects in all three case studies.
Subjects
This study was conducted in the second semester of the 2004 academic year.
The subjects consisted of three biology teachers and 118 students at the three public
high schools in the Bangkok suburban area. The schools had student-teacher training
in cooperation with the Faculty of Education, Kasetsart University, Bangkok,
Thailand. School administration was organized to know the subject information and
then selected the subjects using the following processes.
1. Informal interviews with the teachers indicated the interest of teaching
development in biology education and the teacher background. The interest was a
priority which had brought the three teachers to be selected. Then, the background
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