New Perspectives in Science Education

The aim of the study was to find out the influence of live material on the knowledge level of pupils with special educational needs in the biology lessons. The quasi-experimental design was used as a research method. The using of live materials among pupils with special educational needs is very rare in the conditions of middle Europe. The pupils are working often with textbooks in the biology lessons. So we were trying to find out the effect of the using live material in the biology lessons. Our live material was creating by animals bred as pets, concretely: African pygmy hedgehog (Atelerix albiventris), The Aesculapian snake (Zamenis longissimus) and The leopard gecko (Eublepharis macularius).  The animals were accustomed on humans; pupils could touch them, caress them and also feed them. The sample size was created by 80 pupils (24 with special educational needs and 56 without them). The pupils without special educational needs served as a control of the influence of live material. The pupils were divided into four groups, two experimental (one was created by pupils with special educational needs and second was created by pupils without special educational needs) and two controls (one was created by pupils with special educational needs and second was created by pupils without special educational needs). Pupils in experimental groups worked with live materials and pupils in control groups worked with textbooks. The experiment took three biology lessons; one lesson was devoted to one animal. The content was same in control and also in the experimental groups. The teachers were the authors of the study. The research tool was a test with graphical multiple-choice questions. The methods of descriptive (mean score) and also inferential statistics (Mann-Whitney test) were used. The pupils from experimental groups achieved higher score in comparison with pupils from control groups in posttests. So the using of live material in the biology lessons had got a positive effect on the knowledge at pupils with special educational needs. It can also lead to eliminating the some wrong ideas and this type of learning had got other positive effects.