What Do Secondary Students Really Learn during Investigations with Living Animals? Parameters for Effective Learning with Social Insects.

Exemplary for social insects,Temnothoraxants allow for various hands-on investigations in biology classes. The aim of this study was to provide a quantitative and qualitative analysis of secondary school students’ learning achievement after teaching units with ants lasting between one and six weeks. The questionnaires included transfer and factual knowledge tasks divided into eight fields of knowledge. Students (N  =  459) from 22 classes participated in the study and received different treatments: The experimental group (n  =  366) started their investigations by initial observation using stereo microscopes, while the control group (n  =  93) conducted ant research without this introductory teaching unit. We investigated the influence of class level, gender and time period of participation on knowledge acquisition. Independent of class level, factual learning achievement was observed for all fields of knowledge except ecology. We did not find a positive correlation between time period of participation and basic ant knowledge acquisition. The findings suggest that ant research may be implemented within the framework of a progressive curriculum for all secondary school students. However, attentive and detailed observation of ant colonies with stereo microscopes and continuous repetition of technical terms seem to be inevitable preconditions for learning achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]