[[alternative]]A Case Study of Teaching Performance of Beginning and Experienced Junior High School Biology Teachers on Transport, Genetics and Evolution Units

[[abstract]]This study explored teaching performance of a beginning and an experienced junior high school biology teachers on transport, genetics and evolution units. Interpretive research method was adopted to investigate the comparison of conceptual structure, instructional strategies and instructional representations between two biology teachers. Data were collected by classroom observations, interviews, documents and student questionnaires. The findings showed that the biological conceptual structure of experienced teacher was more complex and more related than that of beginning teacher. The beginning teacher mainly adopted didactic teaching and the experienced teacher mainly adopted discussion teaching. The beginning teacher presented difficult concepts through repeated explanations, however, the experienced teacher presented difficult concepts through multiple instructional representations. Both teachers realized the difficult concepts for students, but, the beginning teacher could not use suitable instructional strategies because she didn’t understand prior knowledge of students and she just knew few instructional strategies. Since the experienced teacher realized prior knowledge of students and knew more instructional strategies, she could use better instructional strategies. The beginning teacher seldom evaluated students’ learning after she taught. The experienced teacher often used multiple methods to evaluate students’ performance after teaching. The beginning teacher didn’t know students’ misconceptions. The experienced teacher realized students’ misconceptions and knew how to help students understand those misconceptions.