Development of alternative teaching materials for Life and Earth Sciences: Immunology as an example

Abstract

The school textbook is an essential element in the teaching-learning process. It represents a pedagogical support for the teacher as well as for the student. However, a survey conducted by our team among a sample of students in the third year of secondary school showed that the majority do not use the textbook as a pedagogical support for the acquisition of knowledge in Life and Earth Sciences (LES). An analytical study of the LES textbooks of the third year of Moroccan secondary school showed that these materials suffer from several shortcomings: cognitive errors, ambiguous vocabulary, and a mosaic of content that makes them difficult to use. In order to enhance the value of the textbook and facilitate its use by students, this article proposes an alternative document that will present a life and health sciences course designed according to a rethought pedagogical scenario, with a dominant participative style, guides for the exploitation of documents, functional diagrams, summary conclusions, etc. In order to evaluate the relevance of this project, the present work proposes, as a pilot sequence, the one relating to the mechanisms of specific immunity in the chapter "Immune responses". This article attempts to evaluate the acquisition of knowledge related to this theme, in an autonomous work session, by two groups of baccalaureate laureates of the Physical Sciences option who have the textbooks, "Al jadid fi SVT" or "Fi rihab SVT", as pedagogical supports. In a second phase, each group was divided into two sub-groups. The first was asked to use a different textbook. The second subgroup was asked to use the new personal production, relating to the same chapter, consisting of a document presenting the restructured course, illustrated by synthetic diagrams, cognitive assessments and summaries. The results of the evaluation carried out at the end of this experiment showed that the grades of the students in the second subgroups improved significantly, compared to the control subgroups. These promising results, demonstrated here, represent a motivation to continue the work on this project of revaluing school textbooks so that they can regain their privileged place in the Moroccan educational system.