Teaching and Learning

Teaching and learning

Senior cycle learners are encouraged to develop the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values that will enable them to become independent learners and to develop a lifelong commitment to improving their learning.

Leaving Certificate biology supports the use of a wide range of teaching and learning approaches. The course is inquiry-based in its design and emphasises practical experience of science for each learner. The importance of the processes of science as well as knowledge and understanding is reflected throughout the learning outcomes. As learners progress they will develop learning strategies that are transferable across different tasks and different subjects enabling them to make connections between biology, other subjects and everyday experiences. Through engaging in self-directed activities and reflection learners will assume much of the responsibility for planning, monitoring and evaluating their own learning and in so doing will develop a positive sense of their own capacity to learn. By engaging in group work learners will develop skills in reasoned argument, listening to each other, informing one another of what they are doing, and reflecting on their own work and that of others. They will develop skills in scientific communication by collaborating to generate reports and present them to their peers.

 

Learners will integrate their knowledge and understanding of biology with the ethical, social, economic and environmental implications and applications of biology. Increasingly, arguments between scientists are subjects that extend into the public domain. By critically evaluating scientific texts and debating public statements about science, learners will engage with contemporary issues in biology that affect their everyday lives. They will learn to interrogate and interpret data—a skill that has a value far beyond biology wherever data are used as evidence to support argument.

 

The variety of activities that learners engage in will enable them to take charge of their own learning by setting goals, developing action plans and receiving and responding to assessment feedback. As well as varied teaching strategies, varied assessment strategies will support learning and provide information that can be used as feedback so that teaching and learning activities can be modified in ways that best suit individual learners. By setting appropriate and engaging tasks, asking higher-order questions, giving feedback that promotes learner autonomy, assessment will support learning as well as summarising achievement.

 

Technology

Technology should be included in activities whenever it enhances student learning, for example by enabling students to complete work more efficiently or to complete work that otherwise could not be done. It should be used to collect, record, analyse and display data and information. The portability of laboratory sensor systems makes them useful for work outside as well as inside the classroom. Software simulations, virtual laboratories and games offer access to contexts for problem-solving and science investigations that are difficult to illustrate in other ways.