Life-Based Narratives: Effects on Student Concept Understanding and Decision-Making Skills in Biology

Abstract

The study aimed at assessing the effect of students’ life-based narratives in furthering conceptunderstanding and decision-making skills among second year high school students of a publichigh school. The study made use of two instruments: the Concept Understanding Test(multiple choice test) and the Decision-making Skills Test (open ended questionnaire). Usinganalysis of covariance (ANCOVA) on the posttest scores of the experimental and controlgroups with the pretest scores as covariate, it was revealed that the use of students’ life-basednarratives as a teaching approach has a positive effect on the concept understanding of thestudents. However, the said approach has no significant effect on students’ decision-makingskills. In terms of establishing the causal relationship between concept understanding anddecision-making skills, linear regression showed that concept understanding can predict thedecision making skills of students.