Philippine E-Journals

The Humanistic Approach in Teaching Biology

Lucille Labiaga-Echavez

 

Abstract:

Humanism plays an important role to the students where inner feelings, emotions, perspectives, and interests are touched to find out if these factors lead to high performance in school. This experimental study investigated the effectiveness of humanistic approach in teaching biology. Two groups of Grade 8 students, one exposed to humanistic approach and the other, the information processing approach, were the subjects of the study. Both groups were given pre-post tests in Biology during the fourth grading period for SY 2013-2014. Both groups obtained Beginning Level of performance during the pretest. For the posttest, the control group remained in the Beginning Level while the experimental group’s performance was elevated to Approaching Proficiency. It was found out that both approaches were effective vehicles in promoting students’ learning in Biology. However, the Humanistic Approach which touches emotions, interests, perspectives, points of views and empathy of the learners would lead to a more enhanced level of performance. Both groups of students exhibited the same level of interest in human organ systems. It is recommended that science teachers should include the Humanistic Approach in their repertoire of teaching strategies. A follow-up study should be made with the inclusion of the relationship between humanistic and information processing approaches to the level of interests of the students.