Organization of educational and research activities of students majoring in biology and ecology

A strategic objective of school education development at present is to achieve a new quality of educational results by updating its goals, content, forms, methods, means and technologies of education. This includes universal educational actions (UEA). One of the ways of UEA development is encouraging of students’ to take part in educational and research activities. Natural science subjects, including Biology and Ecology, have a great potential for carrying out educational and research activities. Educational-research activity is a process of developing new knowledge, previously unknown to the students, aiming at the formulation of the problem, nomination of hypotheses, verification of hypotheses and formulation of conclusions. It has a certain logical sequence and consists of several components: 1) motivational-target component – involves needs and motives development for educational research, its motivation; definition of the methodological apparatus of educational research: formulation of the problem, formulation of its theme, purpose, object, subject, hypothesis and objectives; 2) content component – consists of cognitive (system of knowledge about the object of the research and methods of the research), activity (system of skills necessary for successful training and research activities) and value-orientation (basic national values of the Russian society and personal qualities of the researcher) elements; 3) procedural component – is to determine stages of training and research activities, the choice of methods and means to achieve the goal and objectives, testing the hypothesis; 4) effective evaluation component – includes formulation of conclusions, presentation of the educational search results, presentation of the research product, evaluation of educational and research activities and reflection.