A Study on Role of Diagrams in the Evaluation of Learning Outcomes of Secondary Students in Life Science.

Abstract

In the 20th century, revolutionary changes were brought about in the concepts and theories of biology. Biology, so much important in human life, has been renamed as ‘Life Science’ in the school curriculum. The age of old chalks and talk method of teaching Life science is getting modified and is being supplemented by new techniques. Learning life science requires not only the linguistic ability of the students but also their ability to understand diagrams in different formats related to the subject, and to translate the diagrams in the verbal form. The students are further required to express their knowledge and understanding in unique way through diagrams. So the theoretical segment of life science is composed of verbal as well as nonverbal diagrammatic representations. Diagrams can facilitate understanding, as information is more visually explicit, requires less inference recognition than sentential representations, and constrains inferences, which can guide cognitive processing. So to find out role of diagram in the evaluation of learning outcome the researcher selected government aided one each girls and boys school from urban and rural area. There he administered diagram based test & achievement test. Then from the raw score he interpreted the data by various statistical tools like mean, standard deviation, correlation and t-test. Thus he found that there is positive correlation between diagram and achievement level in life science. He also found that there is significant difference between mean of scores i.e. t-test score in diagram based and achievement test of secondary boys and girls in the schools of urban vs. rural area.