The change process of teaching and learning process is on a different level in every country. The Czech Republic is one of the post-communist countries, where the teacher-oriented learning strategies were typical. Nowadays there is an effort to change them to student-oriented learning strategies and in science subjects to apply inquiry-oriented science program. This science program should have a positive impact on science skills process development. Recognizing the importance of developing science skills in elementary school and carefully defining and organizing those skills are necessary for implementing change. A major stumbling block is the focus on teaching science skills in isolation from their real world applications. Meichtry (1992) mentions the positive effect of science skills; science process skills such as observing, hypothesizing, measuring, collecting, and analyzing data, and drawing conclusions etc. promote problem-solving and critical thinking skills and also promote scientific reasoning (Strand-Cary, Klahr 2008). There is a lack of studies which assess the effect of inquiry-oriented science program on the development of scientific skills (Brickman et al. 2009). From the published results it is obvious that inquiry instruction results in improved student learning (Schneider et al. 2002). Most studies on the effectiveness of inquiry investigations have measured student achievement through acquisition of content knowledge, conceptual understanding, and overcoming misconceptions. Using these variables, the studies demonstrated increases in student achievement in inquiry lab classrooms (Basaga, Geban, & Tekkaya, 1994; Luckie, et al., 2004). However, we were not able to find sources focusing on the teachers’ views on the importance of biological skills. There are some studies focusing on the students’ perception of the importance of the skills. Leggett et al. (2004) investigated students’ perception of the importance of science skills. The authors used a questionnaire and from the answers they found that students' two top skills were finding information and laboratory skills. The authors also provided partial results with an interesting fact that laboratory skills and techniques were not ranked highly by staff. This could be because staff considers these skills as already successfully taught or it may be that staff sees them as content-specific skills. So our effort is to fill the gap by an investigation focusing on teachers´ views of the importance of biological skills.

 The main aim was to investigate the teachers’ view on the importance of biological skills. The partial aims were to compare lower secondary school teachers and high school teachers’ views. Next, we focused on comparing the views on the importance of biological skills with respect to gender, age and residence of respondents.

Research questions:

Is there a significant difference between lower secondary school teachers´ and high school teachers’ views on the importance of biological skills?

Does the gender of respondents have a significant effect on the results?

Does the age of respondents have a significant effect on the results?

Is there any difference in the results with respect to residence of respondents?

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