Pixel International Conferences

We hypothesised and tested the hypothesis that conducting mutual evaluation and recognising students’ own growth in the process of observation and discussion writing of somatic cell division would be effective in understanding the learning content. Observations of somatic cell division were carried out on the third graders in our junior high school. The experimental group carried out mutual evaluation on the task where students were asked to explain why the interphase is longer in the cell cycle based on the number of cells at each stage of cell division. Referring to the criteria proposed by Goto’s mutual evaluation chart [1], we set the criteria as follows: 1) To correspond to the question, 2) The results are presented and the necessary evidence is provided, 3) Content is correct, and 4) Written correctly. No mutual evaluations were conducted in the control group.Subsequently, survey questions were administered to ascertain the degree of understanding of the experimental results and their discussion.Based on the results of the survey questions, the relationship between mutual evaluation and understanding of the learning content was discussed. The results of the survey questions showed that the experimental group scored significantly higher (chi-square test P<0.05) than the control group on 8 of the 13 items, which were questions that required students to relate their existing knowledge to understand what they had learned. Five questions did not differ significantly, four of which were about the understanding of individual knowledge. In the process of mutual evaluation, the experimental group is considered to have made progress in associating their existing knowledge with the results of the experiment and its discussion.These results suggest that mutual evaluation is effective in helping students to relate their existing knowledge and understand what they have learned. It was suggested that when reflecting on observations of somatic cell division, recognising their own development by carrying out mutual evaluation and recording their thought processes is effective in understanding the learning content. Note that recording the thinking process means comparing pre- and post-discussion and examining the content for improvement based on the evaluation criteria chart.

Keywords mutual evaluation, somatic cell division

References

[1] Goto Kenichi. (2013), "A Study on the Effectiveness of Self-Evaluation in High School Chemistry Experiments: Using a Mutual Evaluation Table," Journal of research in science education, Vol. 54, No. 1, pp. 13-24.