The Special Interest Group in Education was formed in 2001 after a secondary school teacher Michael Fenton presented research to the annual conference regarding microbiology misconceptions in the secondary system. He had formed a High School research group called Nexus Research Group and he and his High School student researchers established that there appeared to be a deficit of microbiology knowledge in the secondary system. The NZMS then resolved to set up a special interest group in education with Michael and Dr Mike Pearson as the co-convenors.
The Special Interest group in Education’s purpose is to promote, disseminate and support knowledge of microbiology in the education sector in New Zealand. Functions of this special interest group could be to:
- increase communication between group members
- encourage collaboration between microbiologists
- increase public awareness of microbiology by acting through the NZMS president, as media spokes-groups
- contribute to the organisation of the NZMS Annual Conferences
- arrange meetings in specialist areas of microbiology
- disseminate information through the newsletter
- liaise with the relevant Australian Society for Microbiology SIGs
- Provide academic advise to NZQA and NZ education system.
Current work includes:
Reviewing NCEA workbooks and publications
Review of NCEA assessment tasks of achievement standard 90188 level 1 Biology
Investigating avenues to disseminate resource material
Investigating avenues for NZMS involvement to improve microbiology education
What's new in the Education SIG?
In 2006, a 4500 word review was completed on a commercially available NCEA level 1 booklet – in particular the section relating to microbiology: Achievement standard 90188.
This review [1] was contributed to by various members of the society and contained explanations and suggestions for improvement for the publisher.
The publisher did not acknowledge receipt of the report but MOST of the errors were corrected and another edition of the booklet was released – without acknowledgement to the NZMS. An analysis of the NZQA examination questions and answers was performed and a report to NZQA to clarify some misconceptions was submitted [2, 3] and a reply from the CEO of NZQA was received [4]. These reports and the NZQA reply were part of the presentation at the 2006 NZMS conference and included a statistical analysis by Dr Mary Jane Sneyd of Otago University [5]. These documents are available below.
Ongoing work involves publication of articles outlining the common misconceptions to the science teachers in the secondary school system and to continue correcting publications and observing NZQA external question.
Documents:
[1] Review of educational resource
[2] Letter to NZQA
[3] Assessment report NZQA
[4] NZQA response
[5] NCEA analysis
