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The Effects of Collaborative Care of Living Animals in Biology Lessons on Students’ Relatedness Toward Their Teacher Across Gender

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Abstract

The transition from elementary school to the upper grades can lead to ambiguous feelings toward the new, male teachers. This study investigated whether collaborative animal care in biology lessons affects students’ feelings of relatedness toward their biology teachers positively during the first year after the school transition. Four hundred twenty fifth graders (Mage = 10.5 years, SDage = 0.6 years) of higher types of tracking participated. We designed one experimental group that involved caring for the living animals to be used in the upcoming lessons, and two control groups. The first control group included lessons with living animals, but did not include prior care of those animals, and the second incorporated neither living animals nor prior care. All groups received biology lessons with the same content. To examine the effects of caretaking, we used an adapted version of the scale “relatedness” (Ryan 1982). In both control groups, boys showed lower relatedness toward female teachers and girls toward male teachers, respectively. Collaborative mice care promoted equal relatedness across all gender combinations among teachers and students.

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Acknowledgements

This project is part of the “Qualitätsoffensive Lehrerbildung”, a joint initiative of the Federal Government and the Länder which aims to improve the quality of teacher training. The programme is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (funding code: 01JA1608). The authors are responsible for the content of this publication.

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The author “Nadine Großmann” is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (funding code: 01JA1608).

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Eckes, A., Großmann, N. & Wilde, M. The Effects of Collaborative Care of Living Animals in Biology Lessons on Students’ Relatedness Toward Their Teacher Across Gender. Res Sci Educ 50, 279–301 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-017-9689-0

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