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The reasons for the decline in students' interest in science have been studied for the last decades. The key question is how to stimulate this interest and motivate students and pupils to study science. Part of this thesis was testing the influence of practical courses on upper secondary school students' motivation toward studying biology. To start with, it was found out how many practical courses were taught for each biology topic at Czech upper secondary schools. Molecular biology and genetics emerged as one of the topics with the lowest number of practical courses. Therefore, molecular biology practical courses have been proposed and tested. It was shown that these practical courses can increase students' motivation scores. The possible influece of age, gender and number of practical courses during biology lessons on motivation was tested as well. Motivation of Czech students was compared to motivation of New Zealand students. Younger students and boys were more motivated to study biology in both countries. New Zealand students were more motivated than Czech students. Motivated students like the participants in the Biology Olympiad, Students' Professional Activities, biology summer course and optional biology courses were used to describe the origin of their motivation toward biology.

This bachelor thesis is about science competitions. The first part of the thesis focuses on the factors influencing participation in science competition. The factors have been divided into four groups, the first group focuses on the motivation of pupils and students to participate in competitions. The second group focuses on the school environment and the personality of the teacher, the third group includes the factors of leisure activities. The fourth group discusses family environment factors including the socio-economic status of student's family. The second part of the paper discuses the issue of low participation of women in science competitions with possible suggestions to increase the number of female competitors. The third part of the thesis takes a closer look at the implications of participation in science competitions. Participation in a competition can affect a student both positively and negatively, so this chapter has been divided into sub-sections of Benefits and Negative. The fourth part of the thesis focuses on the impact of science competitions on the pupil's future career. Competitions influence a student's choice of college and future career.

This bachelor thesis is dedicated to vaccination as a successful health method to prevent infectious diseases. It is mentioned here that vaccination is one of the key steps to reducing the number of infectious diseases and their spread in the population. Despite the success of vaccination, there are many individuals who are reticent to vaccinate. The aim of the thesis is to summarize the causes and consequences of this reticent, to highlight the importance of vaccination in education and to inform on available vaccination programmes that could be used in education. First, the work focuses on distrust in science and its influence on reticence towards vaccination, and what effect social networks and communication not only from health professionals have on this issue. There are misconceptions in the work about vaccination that appear among the public. Furthermore, there are reasons for including the topic of vaccination and prevention of infectious diseases in school education mentioned together with how this could be implemented using interactive methods that make it possible to achieve better awareness of the issue. Key words vaccination, vaccine, refusal of vaccination, infectious disease,trust in science, education

This diploma thesis describes practical activities and related topics during forced distant education due to COVID-19 pandemic. In the theoretical part of thesis, the distant education is defined. I also described some of its features, which includes absence of physical contact, use of communication platforms, synchrony and asynchrony form of lesson, need for some degree of independence and digital competence. Anonymous questionnaires were made to collect the data from students and their science subjects' teachers (biology, chemistry, and physics). The questions were with free answers, closed answers with choices or scale values. Respondents consisted of 543 students and 24 teachers from Prague and Central Bohemian Region. The answers were categorized and frequencies calculated. The values of numeric answers such as mean, median, minimum and maximum were measured. The relationship between data was analysed by Pearson's chi squared test of independence. This study shows that teachers used practical activities such as experiments, observation or creating something less in distance lessons, compared to their face to face lessons. On the contrary tasks based on text work were used more often. The analysis showed that students preferred tasks containing creating something. Most teachers taught in both...

This bachelor's theses is dedicated to fieldwork in Biology at secondary school in the Czech Republic. It is dedicated to the topic of school gardens. The first part is presenting the advantages of fieldwork and also its obstacles, which could make the implementation of fieldwork harder. One of these concerns is the emplacement of Biology fieldwork in the curriculum for different educational levels (lower and upper secondary schools), where this method is not often explicitly included. The second part is dedicated to the school gardens in the Czech Republic, it summarizes results of studies exploring gardens' conditions, facilities, and usage. Results show that most of the lower secondary schools have their garden and they also use it for teaching, mostly practical subjects as gardening or cultivating work. In the case of upper secondary schools, there is a lack of comprehensive studies. Other foci of the thesis are: a history of school gardens in Czechia; organizations involved in Biology and Science education in school gardens, and selected teaching methods appropriate for teaching Biology in school gardens.

The thesis focuses on Students' Professional Activities and its influence on high school students who participated. The aim of the thesis was to find out, how attending the competition in category Earth Sciences can influence students when choosing either field of study at college or future job. The thesis is divided into two units. Theoretical part deals with teaching geology on high schools and projects in Czechia and Slovakia that enable high school students to educate in geological fields. Special chapter about Students' Professional Activities is included. Practical part describes qualitative research which consisted in interviewing contestants and consequent analysis of interviews (coding, categorization). Interpretation was made by narrative approach. Results in the form of answered research questions show that attending the competition has significant positive influence on the contestants. In conclusion, both benefits and imperfections of Students' Professional Activities are summarized together with suggestions on better popularization of geology among students. Key words: geology, qualitative research, interviews, Students' Professional Activities, Earth Sciences

The aim of this thesis is to find out, with the help of a questionnaire survey and a preferential test, the preferences of pupils of lower secondary education for various types of teaching aids in biology. The preferential test was carried out on real zoological preparations (liquid cylinders, eventually embedded in resin) and on corresponding 3D educational models made of plastic or other modeling materials. The research is a follow-up to a diploma thesis examining the same preferences in upper secondary school students (Šibravová, 2016). The main objective is to extend this issue to younger pupils and to compare the results of both age groups. The goal is to find out whether and how the preferences change with the age of pupils and if it is necessary to adjust the choice of teaching aids in accordance to pupils' age. The first pilot research was carried out on one class of a grammar school. Then other classes of lower secondary education in Prague were tested. The total number of respondents was almost 200 pupils. This was followed by statistical processing and data evaluation. The results showed that 3D teaching models are better rated for lower secondary education than the corresponding real zoological preparations. This is the exact opposite to the results of upper secondary school students....

8 Abstract About fifteen years ago, the Czech education system underwent a curricular reform. Thanks to that, schools have gained more freedom, but also responsibility how education will look in their case. The implementation of the reform was accompanied by various expectations but also by misunderstandings and problems. A revision of Framework Education Programme (FEP) is now planned. At the moment, however, it is not yet clear what will be the subject or the goals of this revision. This work aims to examine the current situation in the field of natural science and to subject selected school educational programs (SEP) to quantitative analysis. SEPs are understood here as one of the possible indicators of how some ideas from the Framework Educational Programs for Lower Education were conceived and developed by teachers. The thesis focuses mainly on areas that have been newly accentuated by the curricular reform. These are topics of key competences, interconnection of subjects (either within cross-curricular topics or interdisciplinary links through selected curriculum) and last but not least the topic of methods and forms of teaching and work with the content itself. All online SEPs of Prague lower secondary schools (plus ten unpublished on the school websites) were analyzed, taking into account only the...

This diploma thesis focuses on the education of genetics to grammar schools and students' comprehension of genetics. This abstract scientific discipline is considered difficult to learn so I decided to prepare educational materials with the aim to improve students' understanding of the topic. The main aim of the thesis was to prepare and test a didactic game focused on Mendelian inheritance and compare the effectivity of this kind of interactive education compared with the classical explanatory style of education. Other aims included evaluating the influence of other variables; comparing the difficulty of individual terms in genetics and the connection within chosen triplet of terms; and identifying the most common misconceptions. The data was collected in four classes of upper graders at two grammar schools by newly prepared questionnaire focused on demographic and knowledge. The results showed that the didactic game was as efficient as the classical explanatory method at creating short term knowledge Students had a bigger problem with explaining the connection among the terms than defining the individual terms. The most complicated term reported by the students was chromosome. It was the only term in which there wasn't any improvement between pre-test and post-test. Part of this thesis is also...

Understanding of students' attitudes is important in supporting their interest toward a particular subject. Students' attitudes toward science have been extensively studied and it has been showed that their interest decrease with age. In the Czech Republic, there are studies concerning pupils' attitudes towards biology at primary school, but high school students' attitudes towards biology are less known. Thus, the aim of this study focuses on high school students' attitudes toward biology and variables (such as gender, age, the most favourite subject and out-of-school activities) which affect them. In addition, the thesis focuses on the students' view of the particular biology fields taught at high schools, from the point of view of usefulness for life, difficulty and the level of attention given to them by teacher during the biology classes. The research was done using a questionnaire survey at high schools in the Czech Republic and the total number of 192 students took part in the survey. The results of the diploma thesis show that the attitudes of students towards biology are neutral. A more positive attitude towards biology was found in girls and younger students. Furthermore, the influence of the most popular subject and out-of-school activities on students' attitudes towards biology was...

The population of the Czech republic is getting older. That applies to other European states, including the most advanced ones. In response to that, universities through out the Czech republic have began offering third age university for senior citizens. For my thesis, I decided to conduct studies on this group of inviduals. This group of seniors that have decided to enroll back in school are eager to learn something new, here at the University. In this thesis I am studying personality characteristics of third age university students. From this research, I have managed to create a general profile of the aforementioned student. Another task was to find out what was the motivation and the reason for them to attend the university. The motivation is in many respects similar to the studies already carried out on this topic, but due to the method I chose for my research, I was able to get further under the surface. The research was done using semi-structured interviews that were on average 1 hour long. Key words: old adult, university of the third age, old adult motivation, qualitative research, profile of student U3A

The diploma thesis focuses on investigating attitudes of czech high school students toward genetically modified organisms (= GMO). The main objectives of this thesis are to investigate students' attitudes toward, and knowledge of GMO, to find out any relation between attitudes toward, and knowledge of GMO. I found out if there is any relation between students' attitudes toward GMO and other factors like family environment (level and type of eduction of parents, religion), school environment (teachers who teach students, school) or place of residence. Data colletion was carried out by quantitative questionnaire survey among 185 Czech students of Prague's and out-of-town's grammar schools from 10 different classes. My findings show that the attitudes of Czech students toward GMO are positive and are not influenced by gender, parents' education, the students' attitudes toward biology, type of students' planned studies at university or the location of their school. However, at the same time, a statistically significant difference was found in the case of free-time activities, the teacher who teaches students and the purchase of organic food. In the case of the students' knowledge, a significant difference was found in the case of the type of the father's education, the type of the students' planned...

High-school students are less interested in science then before. Despite importance of science for our life and for description of nature around us, students lose motivation for studying it. The approach of teacher is critical for focusing students' attention. Lessons should be based on linking of the education with daily-life and biology provides plenty of possibilities to achieve the goal, especially employing hand-on education, practical examples and exercises. One of the most effective way to show the beauty and a complexity of organism structure is by using microscopes. Many different techniques have been used to prepare education materials - picture, videos or whole movies from micro-word. Nevertheless, a classical optical microscopy is by far the most common training activity during the practical courses. An evaluation of this education aspects is, therefore, critical for further method development. This diploma thesis is focused on establishing of evaluation techniques and subsequent analysis of the current state of students' microscopy skills. First of all, the elementary set of knowledge and the correct microscopy work-flow were established in collaboration with eleven experienced teachers. Based on these results, two types of surveys were designed. One of them was dedicated to teachers...

The diploma thesis deals with the motivation of university students to study the teaching of biology. The aim of this thesis was to find which factors influenced the students when deciding the field of their studies. Student motivation was examined using a qualitative method of semi-structured interviews. The research group consisted of 11 university students of the master's degree program of the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Education at Charles University in the teaching fields combined with biology. The research results show that the primary interest in biology was evident in respondents already during their early childhood or later at an elementary school. In relation to biology, the respondents were influenced by the family and the teachers at either primary or secondary schools. The thesis presents extrinsic and intrinsic motives for the study of biology. The choice of teaching was affected the most by the interest in working with children and the expectation of creative work in the future, even though the respondents were aware of the low financial valuation, the time and psychological demands of the profession. The biology teachers also opted for the possibility of further subject developing and supporting interest in biology interest among pupils. The thesis also contains a...

Students are less interested in science studies in this time. Yet, it is evolving and indispensable field (medicine, genetics). Various fields of biology students are evaluated differently. Botany is not very popular for students and often even for their teachers. More popular may be, for example, human biology, zoology and emerging fields such as genetics. Studying of plants isn't interesting for pupils, memories of learning about plants for them often spending hours with the botanical atlas without practical training in the field or on an excursion. There is a reason to writing this thesis about identification of angiosperms in high school. The thesis deals with different methods used for teaching identification of angiosperm plants at Prague high schools and their effectiveness. It compares the different methods used by teachers of these schools, focuses on with ways of testing plants cognition and the number of species that pupils should be able to recognize. The high school teachers' expectations are compared with the university teachers' expectations of the knowledge of incoming biology students. Effectiveness of teaching was tested by recognizing the required species. Students were asked to recognise the fresh plants. The success rate of students of teachers who use to teach different...

This diploma thesis investigates attitudes of students and teachers of secondary schools (gymnasia) towards the use of dissections into educational process. Questionnaire survey is a part of the research, by which opinions about animal dissections are examined in terms of a particular interest in dissections, of general interest in natural sciences, disgust towards the peculiar facts and situations taking place during dissections and finally in terms of ethical standpoint of all respondents. Statistic processing of results examined relations between all presented aspects and between gender, age, school grade and targeting of studies, experience with dissections and interest of all teachers themselves. At the beginning of the inquiry the following research questions were stated: 1. Are attitudes of students towards dissections during the lessons of biology different between genders? 2. Are those attitudes affected by factors such as subject preference, targeted field of study, own experience with dissections, favoured method of teaching anatomy or owning a pet? 3. Do mutual correlations between the attitude of a student and a particular teacher exist? 4. Are standpoints of teachers towards dissections during the lessons of biology influenced by various factors such as implementation into educational...

This thesis deals with the preference of pupils at secondary schools (gymnasia) for different types of teaching aids in zoology education. The main objective was to determine whether the pupils rate educational models as more attractive than the real zoological preserved specimens and whether their preferences are related to their susceptibility to potentially phobic stimuli, realism of the object or whether preferences differ between the sexes. Selected models included entire animals as well as animal organs. The research was conducted at selected secondary schools (gymnasia) in Prague and Jablonec nad Nisou using a questionnaire and a preference test. Secondary school pupils and their biology teachers participated in this research. The realistic design of each object was assessed by researchers and students from the Faculty of Science Charles University using a scale questionnaire. The results showed that students rated the real zoological preserved specimens as more attractive compared to teaching models, with no dependence on whether the objects were entire or anatomical. Effect of gender on overall preference has not been showed; however, the boys had a tendency to evaluate generally unpopular organisms more positively than girls. No influence of susceptibility to potentially phobic stimuli,...

Drugs seem to be really hot topic discussed especially at high schools. Not only the particular drug addicted person but also the entire society and even the state have to face to many risks. School institutions should become one of the places where the primary steps of prevention should be implemented. In order to prepare proper topics and themes for discussions and meetings against drug use, it is important to know which drugs are used and preferred by young Prague citizens. The main aim of this thesis is to map the real situation that exists in the area of drug us in Prague. That is why a survey - based on a questionnaire - was carried out to gather the data to be able to analyze the differences that exist among the students of high schools, especially grammar schools and vocational schools as well as the boys and girls. The theoretical part of the thesis is focused on detailed information about particular drugs and mapping of the situation that exists in this area in Poland, Austria, Slovakia and Germany. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)