Teachers’ and students’ perceptions of teaching-learning activities used in secondary school biology classrooms: a comparative study

The quality of education provided to students is closely related to teacher professional knowledge and teaching-learning activities used in classrooms. Teachers’ and students’ perceptions of teaching-learning activities used in their classrooms may influence and give insight into educational quality. This study compared 40 teachers’ and 469 students’ perceptions about teaching-learning activities used in biology classrooms. The participants were selected from eight Zambian secondary schools, and data were collected using paper-based Likert-scale surveys. Data were analysed using the statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS) to compute frequencies and Chi-square tests. The results revealed that teachers had more positive perceptions than students for all teaching-learning activities indicators. Furthermore, the perceptual differences between teachers and students were statistically significant for most (65%) of the teaching-learning activities. The results also revealed that the participants’ perceptions of teaching-learning activities in the components ‘making biology teaching-learning easy’ and ‘assessment strategies’ were negative. The implications of these findings for teaching and learning were discussed. The study recommends exploring the reasons behind the participants’ perceptions through data from actual classroom observations. The study also recommends supporting teachers’ enactment of teaching-learning activities related to the categories ‘making biology teaching-learning easy’ and ‘assessment strategies’. © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.