MONITORING OF MEDICINAL PLANT RESOURCES AS MEANS OF FORMING STUDENTS RESEARCH SKILLS IN BIOLOGY

Abstract

The article examines the formation of research skills in biology by means of monitoring resources of medicinal plants among students of specialized secondary education. Different interpretations of the concept of “research activity” in modern pedagogical studies and normative legal acts of Ukraine are analyzed. The author’s interpretation of the definition “research skill in biology” is proposed – the ability of secondary education students to conduct independent observations of living organisms, to perform experiments with them; a system of cognitive and practical general scientific and special biological and ecological knowledge and skills of students of research activity, necessary for the independent implementation of experimental exploration or part of it. The article reveals that the educational system of forming the specified quality of students consists of interrelated and interdependent components: motivational (positive motivation), cognitive-operational (knowledge, abilities and skills) and reflective (self-analysis, self-evaluation, self-development). Four levels of formation of the research skills of high school students regarding the study of living nature are distinguished, taking into account the approaches of domestic teachers, namely: initial, primary, productive and creative. With the aim of effective formation of research skills in biology among high school students, a research project on the topic “Monitoring of medicinal plant resources of Boryspil district of Kyiv region” was proposed and implemented in the educational process of the vocational and technical education institution within the scope of studying the subject “Biology and Ecology”. According to the results of the analysis of the genesis of the problem, the effectiveness of the introduction of the proposed research project into the educational process of the vocational and technical education institution was substantiated and experimentally proven, which contributed to increasing the level of formation of research skills in biology among students of specialized secondary education. The effectiveness of the conducted work was proven by comparing the results of the ascertaining and formative stages of the pedagogical experiment. In the research process, it was recorded that 2.38%, 26.19%, 38.09% and 33.33% of respondents in the experimental group found the original, initial, productive and creative levels of formation of the phenomenon under study, and 39.75% in the control group, 46.15%, 24.36%, 1.28%, respectively.