Motivating pupils in teaching is one of the tasks of a teacher. To do this, the teacher needs to be familiar with motivational techniques, but also with the teaching topics that his/her pupils find popular or unpopular. The research presented here investigated the views on the popularity of biology teaching topics among teachers (N=7) and pupils (N=314) through a questionnaire survey at lower secondary school. Respondents indicated the level of popularity of the topics on a 5-point Likert scale. In addition, teachers were asked about whether they motivate pupils in teaching each topic and in what ways. The results show that teachers do not know how popular all topics are with pupils. Differences in opinions on popularity of more than 20 % were observed, e.g. for the topics of heredity and genetics, botany, ecological relationships between organisms and practical knowledge of nature. On the other hand, the topics for which teachers are better informed about the popularity of the topics among pupils (agreement in opinions less than 10 %) are cell, anatomy and morphology of animals, inanimate nature (in Czech schools it is taught as part of biology at lower secondary school) and nature and environmental protection. Overall, 84 % of teachers motivate their pupils in all the topics surveyed, but not all of them stated how. The specific responses then show that they use a fairly wide range of motivational techniques, but their average representation was essentially the same for topics that are popular with pupils and those that are not. Most often, pupils were motivated by using a learning activity (laboratory work, IBSE, concept map creation, outdoor learning, CLIL, discussion, lecture by an expert) or a teaching aid (microscope, magnifying glass, videos, scientific texts). These results can be useful for teachers in practice as they show the need to be aware of the popularity of the teaching topics with their pupils, so that they can focus their attention on possibly unpopular topics when preparing for teaching and when planning the use of different motivation methods.

Keywords: Topic popularity, biology, motivational techniques, teachers, pupils.