Students' & teachers' attitude towards new curriculum of Life Science at secondary level in West Bengal

Curriculum should be based upon totality of experiences, variety & flexibility, relation to community life, training for leisure and integration and correlation (Secondary Education Commission -1952-53) and curriculum framework which should contain a common core along with other components which are flexible (NPE-1986). Science curriculum should be strengthened so as to develop in the child well-defined abilities and values such as the spirit of inquiry, creativity, objectives, the courage to question and an aesthetic sensibility and Science education programs will be designed to enable the learner to acquire problem solving ability, experimental skills and to discover the relationship of science with health, agriculture, industry and other aspects of daily life (NPE-1986). In West Bengal new science curriculum was constructed on the basis of above mentioned objectives with constructivist approach (NCF- 2005) in teaching learning and it was implemented from 2013 at Upper Primary along with other levels of schooling. The present study was conducted to inquire the students' and teachers' attitude towards new curriculum of life science at secondary level in West Bengal. SATNCLS and TATNCLS were administered into 100 randomly selected students and 60 randomly selected life science teachers for measuring their attitude towards new curriculum of life science in WBBSE. The major findings were observed that students and life science teachers of West Bengal possess a moderate positive attitude towards new life science curriculum. Female students had better attitude towards life science new curriculum than male and on the other hand rural students have higher attitude towards life science new curriculum than the urban student. Another most important finding was male teacher possessed higher attitude towards new curriculum of life science than female teachers, but location of school, academic qualification and training had no significant role to construct attitude of teachers towards new curriculum of life science.© The Secretary, Ramakrishna Mission Sikshanamandir