Abstract
We examined how upper secondary school students perceive the usefulness and difficulty of biology disciplines. Czech students (N = 192) from three schools answered a questionnaire with 5-point Likert scales.
We tested the influence of gender and experience with the individual biological disciplines at upper secondary school on the perception of the biological disciplines. We examined differences among the perception of individual biological disciplines.
All disciplines were perceived as useful for life which did not change during studies. Human biology was perceived as the most useful for life, protozoology was considered the least useful followed by mycology and cell biology.
Girls perceived several disciplines as more useful than did boys. The perceived difficulty of some disciplines decreased during studies.
Genetics was perceived as the most difficult followed by cell biology. Ecology and environmental protection were perceived as the easiest disciplines.
Further research is needed to explain whether pupils feel studying biology answered their questions about nature or their fulfilled their expectations about the complexity of science.