High school teachers? and students? opinions concerning 9th grade renovated biology school book

The aim in the study is to determine students? and teacher?s opinions about 9th grade biology textbooks (schoolbooks) which have been renovated in accordance with a constructivist learning approach. During the revision progress, a literature research was conducted in order to find out the answer to the questions including a new biology teaching program, innovations concerning schoolbooks, surveys used to evaluate schoolbooks, constructivist approach and its principles, properties which are supposed to be involved in a schoolbook according to constructivist approach. Besides, an attitude scale related to schoolbooks was prepared and then preformed after carrying out a pilot scheme. The renovated 9.grade schoolbook was investigated in terms of content, learning-teaching activities, assessment and evaluation methods and design. The scale prepared in order to detect student?s opinions was applied to 751 of students from 9 schools located in the city of Trabzon and in Akcaabat, a town in Trabzon. Cronbach Alpha Reliability Coefficientwas described as 0.94 and the data was analyzed by the program SPSS-15.0 in addition, semi-structured interviews with 9 of biology teachers working at these schools were carried out in order to learn their opinions about renovated biology schoolbooks. As a result of interviews and surveys conducted, it was clear that students and teachers were in general pleased with the renovated 9th grade schoolbook. However, it was noticed that they had negative opinions concerning the way which the schoolbook apply giving the subjects. Moreover, teachers described the practicability of the schoolbook quite low even though it was pleasing. According to the comparison performed in terms of students? gender and school type, female students found the book favorable rather than male ones and regular high school students rather than Anatolian high school. For the constructivist learning approach, schoolbooks should not be very intensive in terms of content. Therefore this renovated schoolbook must be revised by reconsidering its intensive content and its wording way.