To increase the effectiveness of education is appropriate to incorporate varied teaching methods with multisensory stimulation and with an emphasis on personal and emotional experiences. This study aims to compare the knowledge of biology subject matter acquired by second and fourth-grade primary students. The lesson occurred at a farm in the experimental group and at school in the control group. Students' knowledge levels were assessed before the lesson, after the lesson, after 14 days, after a month, and after six months. When the levels of knowledge after the lesson were compared between the groups, significantly better results (p = 0.001) were recorded in students in the control group. Another 14 days after the lesson, there was no significant difference in knowledge between the groups (p = 0.848). The same results were obtained after a month (p = 0.760) and after six months (p = 0.649). In the experimental group, the intra-group analysis did not show any significant difference in the levels of knowledge before and after the lesson; it was recorded only after 14 days. In contrast, the control group showed a significant improvement in knowledge right after the lesson, which was not observed later on. Most often, this phenomenon was observed in second-grade students. The presence of animals in an educational setting can add many benefits, such as mental well-being, an increase in empathy, or support for socio-emotional development. Since the levels of subject matter knowledge acquired at a farm and at school were similar, it seems that farm lessons should not negatively impact education, and it offers many related positive effects.
Copyright: © 2023 Malariková et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.