How is the body’s systemic nature manifested amongst high school biology students?

This study follows two groups of students (67 in all) through the 3 years of their high school biology education and examines the development of their systems thinking - specifically their models of the human body as a system. Both groups were composed of biology majors, but the students in one group also participated in a PBLbased extension program called “Medical Systems”. Data was gathered by means of concept maps, which the students completed at four strategic stages of the learning process: beginning of 10th grade, end of 10th grade, end of 11th grade and end of 12th grade. At the end of the 3 year learning process, the students’ showed more complex system models. They included a wider range of concepts in their maps, spanning hierarchy levels ranging from the molecular and cellular to the system level. We also found an increase in references to dynamic interactions, but this did not encourage the students to use cellular level processes when explaining phenomena that occur at the systems level. The impact of the PBL teaching method was strongly evident in the complexity of the Medical Systems program students’ concept maps, which heavily emphasized “hierarchy” and “diseases” as system characteristics.     

Recurring patterns in the development of high school biology students’ system thinking over time

The goal of this study was to identify and understand the mental models developed by 67 high school biology students as they learn about the human body as a complex system. Using concept maps, it sought to find an external way of representing how students organize their ideas about the human body system in their minds. We conducted a qualitative analysis of four concept maps created by each student throughout the 3-year learning process, which allowed us to identify that student’s systems thinking skills and the development of those skills over time. The improvement trajectories of the students were defined according to three central characteristics of complex systems: (a) hierarchy, (b) homeostasis and (c) dynamism. A comparative analysis of all of our students’ individual trajectories together revealed four typical learning patterns, each of which reflects a different form of development for systems thinking: “from the structure to the process level”, “from macro to micro level”, “from the cellular level to the organism level,” and “development in complexity of homeostasis mechanisms”. Despite their differences, each of these models developed over time from simpler structures, which evolved as they connected with more complex system aspects, and each indicates advancement in the student’s systems thinking.     

新课程背景下生物学习动机因素的调查与分析

文章采用问卷调查法,在长治市范围内,对影响中学生生物学习的动机因素进行了调查。结果表明:(1)高中生物学习的动机水平较高,平均值为4.12,多属融入型动机。(2)影响高中生物学习动机的主要因素是个人需要、升学就业和学科特点,这些因素与学习动机的相关系数最高,均高于0.9,而消极归因与学习动机呈负相关,相关系数为-0.0555。     

Teaching statistics in biology: using inquiry-based learning to strengthen understanding of statistical analysis in biology laboratory courses

There is an increasing need for students in the biological sciences to build a strong foundation in quantitative approaches to data analyses. Although most science, engineering, and math field majors are required to take at least one statistics course, statistical analysis is poorly integrated into undergraduate biology course work, particularly at the lower-division level. Elements of statistics were incorporated into an introductory biology course, including a review of statistics concepts and opportunity for students to perform statistical analysis in a biological context. Learning gains were measured with an 11-item statistics learning survey instrument developed for the course. Students showed a statistically significant 25% (p < 0.005) increase in statistics knowledge after completing introductory biology. Students improved their scores on the survey after completing introductory biology, even if they had previously completed an introductory statistics course (9%, improvement p < 0.005). Students retested 1 yr after completing introductory biology showed no loss of their statistics knowledge as measured by this instrument, suggesting that the use of statistics in biology course work may aid long-term retention of statistics knowledge. No statistically significant differences in learning were detected between male and female students in the study.     

Fostering Analogical Reasoning Through Creating Robotic Models of Biological Systems

This article considers student analogical reasoning associated with learning practice in creating bio-inspired robots. The study was in the framework of an outreach course for middle school students. Fifty eighth and ninth graders performed inquiries into behavior and locomotion of snakes and designed robotic models using the BIOLOID robot construction kit. We analyzed the interdomain analogies between biological and robotic systems elaborated by the students and evaluated the contribution of the analogies to the integrated learning of biology and robotics. The analogies expressed by the students at different stages of the course were collected and categorized, and their use in knowledge construction was traced. The study indicated that students’ reasoning evolved with learning, towards an increased share of deeper analogies at the end of the course. We found that analogical reasoning helped students to construct knowledge and guided their inquiry and design activities. In the proposed framework, the students learn to inquire into biological systems, generate analogies, and use them for developing and improving robotic systems.

     

Enhancing systems‐thinking skills with modelling

Systems thinking is an essential cognitive skill that enables individuals to develop an integrative understanding of a given subject at the conceptual and systemic level. Yet, systems thinking is not usually an innate skill. Helping students develop systems‐thinking skills warrants attention from educators. This paper describes a study examining the effects of utilising systems modelling as a cognitive tool in enhancing a group of graduate students' systems‐thinking skills. A significant improvement was observed in the systems‐thinking practises of the students. A theoretical rationale for enhancing systems‐thinking skills with modelling and the results of the study will be discussed.     

KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER IN BIOLOGY AND TRANSLATION ACROSS EXTERNAL REPRESENTATIONS: EXPERTS' VIEWS AND CHALLENGES FOR LEARNING

Recent curriculum reform promotes core competencies such as desired ‘content knowledge’ and ‘communication’ for meaningful learning in biology. Understanding in biology is demonstrated when pupils can apply acquired knowledge to new tasks. This process requires the transfer of knowledge and the subordinate process of translation across external representations. This study sought ten experts’ views on the role of transfer and translation processes in biology learning. Qualitative analysis of the responses revealed six expert themes surrounding the potential challenges that learners face, and the required cognitive abilities for transfer and translation processes. Consultation with relevant curriculum documents identified four types of biological knowledge that students are required to develop at the secondary level. The expert themes and the knowledge types exposed were used to determine how pupils might acquire and apply these four types of biological knowledge during learning. Based on the findings, we argue that teaching for understanding in biology necessitates fostering ‘horizontal’ and ‘vertical’ transfer (and translation) processes within learners through the integration of knowledge at different levels of biological organization.     

研究型分子生物学实验课程体系建立与实践

分子生物学是在分子水平上研究生物生长发育的调控机制及其遗传基础,其基本理论的建立依赖于实验,因此也是实验性非常强的学科。分子生物学实验课程是培养高素质生物类本科人才必修课程。目前我国大学本科分子生物学实验课程多数滞后于该学科发展,制约了人才培养。学校构建新实验课程教学体系,直接将相关的科研成果转化为本科实验教学项目,制定了一套系统性强,能够培养本科生综合能力的研究型分子生物学实验课程体系。通过近2年的教学实践,取得了良好的教学效果。     

The effect of the biology critical thinking project on the development of critical thinking

This article describes the Biology Critical Thinking (BCT) project in which carefully designed activities for developing specific critical thinking skills are incorporated into the biology curriculum. The objectives were to find out whether the BCT project contributes to the development of critical thinking skills in various biological and nonbiological topics and how it affects students' biological knowledge and classroom learning environment. The study consisted of 678 seventh graders who were assigned randomly into two groups that studied the same seventh-grade biology textbook. Only one group, the experimental, completed the BCT activities. The results indicate that the students in the experimental group improved their critical thinking skills compared to their own initial level and compared to their counterparts in the control group. Improved critical thinking skills were observed in a new biological context and nonbiological everyday topics, suggesting generalization of thinking skills across domains. The experimental students scored significantly higher than the control on a knowledge test, suggesting that “knowledge of facts” as one educational goal and “learning to think” as another, need not conflict, but rather can interact with each other. Finally, the results show that BCT involvement decreased the frequency of teacher-centered teaching and enhanced student-centered, more active learning.     

Positions Toward Science Studies in Medicine Among University Graduates of Medicine and the Teenaged Participants of the ��Medical Systems�� Study Program

The ??Medical Systems?? program was designed to introduce high school students to the world of advanced medicine. Its premise was to use an applied scientific discipline like medicine to encourage high-school students?? interest in basic science. This study compares the teen-aged graduates of ??Medical Systems?? with fourth and fifth-year medical students. It aims to identify the attitudes of these two groups towards medical science and basic sciences in medicine. The population included 94 graduates of ??Medical Systems?? from schools throughout Israel, who had also completed an advanced-level course in a basic science (biology, chemistry or physics), and 96 medical students from different Israeli universities. The students?? attitudes were measured using West et al.??s questionnaire (Med Educ 16(4):188?C191, 1982), which assesses both the attitude of the participants towards basic science knowledge, and their attitude towards their learning experience in medical school. Nine participants from each group were also interviewed using a semi-structured interview protocol. The results showed essential differences in the attitudes of the two groups. The high school students consider scientific knowledge far more essential for a physician than do the medical students, who also showed a far lower estimation of the effectiveness of their science studies.     

High School Students’ Understanding of the Human Body System

In this study, 120 tenth-grade students from 8 schools were examined to determine the extent of their ability to perceive the human body as a system after completing the first stage in their biology curriculum - “The human body, emphasizing homeostasis”. The students’ systems thinking was analyzed according to the STH thinking model, which roughly divides it into three main levels that are arranged “pyramid” style, in an ascending order of difficulty: 1. Analysis of system components—the ability to identify the components and processes existing in the human body system; 2. Synthesis of system components—ability to identify dynamic relations within the system; 3. Implementation—ability to generalize and identify patterns in the system, and to identify its hidden dimensions. The students in this study proved largely incapable of achieving systems thinking beyond the primary STH level of identifying components. An overwhelming majority if their responses corresponded to this level of the STH model, further indicating a pronounced favoring of structure over process, and of larger, macro elements over microscopic ones.     

Student teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge for teaching systems thinking: effects of different interventions

ABSTRACT

Systems’ thinking has become increasingly relevant not only in education for sustainable development but also in everyday life. Even if teachers know the dynamics and complexity of living systems in biology and geography, they might not be able to effectively explain it to students. Teachers need an understanding of systems and their behaviour (content knowledge), and they also need to know how systems thinking can be fostered in students (pedagogical content knowledge (PCK)). But the effective development of teachers’ professional knowledge in teaching systems thinking is empirically uncertain. From a larger study (SysThema) that investigated teaching systems thinking, this article reports the effects of the three different interventions (technical course, didactic course and mixed course) in student teachers’ PCK for teaching systems thinking. The results show that student teachers’ PCK for teaching systems thinking can be promoted in teacher education. The conclusion to be drawn from our findings is that a technically orientated course without didactical aspects seems to be less effective in fostering student teachers’ PCK for teaching systems thinking. The results inform educators in enhancing curricula of future academic track and non-academic track teacher education.     

Generative mechanistic explanation building in undergraduate molecular and cellular biology*

ABSTRACT

When conducting scientific research, experts in molecular and cellular biology (MCB) use specific reasoning strategies to construct mechanistic explanations for the underlying causal features of molecular phenomena. We explored how undergraduate students applied this scientific practice in MCB. Drawing from studies of explanation building among scientists, we created and applied a theoretical framework to explore the strategies students use to construct explanations for ‘novel’ biological phenomena. Specifically, we explored how students navigated the multi-level nature of complex biological systems using generative mechanistic reasoning. Interviews were conducted with introductory and upper-division biology students at a large public university in the United States. Results of qualitative coding revealed key features of students’ explanation building. Students used modular thinking to consider the functional subdivisions of the system, which they ‘filled in’ to varying degrees with mechanistic elements. They also hypothesised the involvement of mechanistic entities and instantiated abstract schema to adapt their explanations to unfamiliar biological contexts. Finally, we explored the flexible thinking that students used to hypothesise the impact of mutations on multi-leveled biological systems. Results revealed a number of ways that students drew mechanistic connections between molecules, functional modules (sets of molecules with an emergent function), cells, tissues, organisms and populations.     

Exploring the factors related to acceptance of evolutionary theory among Turkish preservice biology teachers: Toward a more informative conceptual ecology for biological evolution

In this study, using multiple regression analysis, we aimed to explore the factors related to acceptance of evolutionary theory among preservice Turkish biology teachers using conceptual ecology for biological evolution as a theoretical lens. We aimed to determine the extent to which we can account for the variance in acceptance of evolutionary theory by using understanding of evolutionary theory, epistemological beliefs, thinking dispositions, and parents' educational level as independent variables. Preservice biology teachers' thinking dispositions, their understanding of evolutionary theory, and their parents' educational level are positively correlated with acceptance of evolutionary theory. We did not find any significant positive correlation between epistemological beliefs and acceptance of evolution because of low reliability coefficients of subscales of the epistemological beliefs instrument. Together they explained 10.5% of the variance. These results suggest that studying the relationship between acceptance of evolutionary theory and other related factors in a multivariate context is more informative than examining the relationship between acceptance of evolutionary theory and other factors in isolation. Our findings indicate that studying a controversial issue such as acceptance of evolutionary theory in a multivariate fashion, using conceptual ecology as a theoretical lens to interpret the findings, is informative. Our results suggest the inclusion of thinking dispositions in conceptual ecology for biological evolution. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 45: 420–443, 2008     

Ready for university? A cross-national study of students’ perceived preparedness for university

Students’ preparedness for higher education is seen as one of the main factors affecting first-year attrition or study success. In this paper we report on a cross-national study in which students’ preparedness for university was measured before students commenced their study at a university in New Zealand or in the Netherlands. This cross-national project provided a unique opportunity to compare students’ perceptions of readiness for university where students are prepared for higher education in quite different secondary school systems. Departing from a transition framework, and comparing the results in both countries using logistic regression techniques to investigate which aspects of readiness could predict perceived preparedness, we discovered similarities in as well as differences between students’ perceived readiness for university study. It could be argued that differences are caused by the different educational systems at secondary level. However, overall we can conclude that, in spite of differences between the educational systems in the two countries, many differences were not remarkable or very significant. This has clear implications for how we view the relative importance of secondary school preparation and tertiary induction. We can expect greater benefit from implementing first-year pedagogical practices in universities that would assist students to develop their academic skills, than from demanding that high schools prepare students better.     

Doctoral conceptual thresholds in cellular and molecular biology

ABSTRACT

In the biological sciences, very little is known about the mechanisms by which doctoral students acquire the skills they need to become independent scientists. In the postsecondary biology education literature, identification of specific skills and effective methods for helping students to acquire them are limited to undergraduate education. To establish a foundation from which to investigate the developmental trajectory of biologists’ research skills, it is necessary to identify those skills which are integral to doctoral study and distinct from skills acquired earlier in students’ educational pathways. In this context, the current study engages the framework of threshold concepts to identify candidate skills that are both obstacles and significant opportunities for developing proficiency in conducting research. Such threshold concepts are typically characterised as transformative, integrative, irreversible, and challenging. The results from interviews and focus groups with current and former doctoral students in cellular and molecular biology suggest two such threshold concepts relevant to their subfield: the first is an ability to effectively engage primary research literature from the biological sciences in a way that is critical without dismissing the value of its contributions. The second is the ability to conceptualise appropriate control conditions necessary to design and interpret the results of experiments in an efficient and effective manner for research in the biological sciences as a discipline. Implications for prioritising and sequencing graduate training experiences are discussed on the basis of the identified thresholds.     

Explanation in Biology: Reduction, Pluralism, and Explanatory Aims

This essay analyzes and develops recent views about explanation in biology. Philosophers of biology have parted with the received deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation primarily by attempting to capture actual biological theorizing and practice. This includes an endorsement of different kinds of explanation (e.g., mathematical and causal-mechanistic), a joint study of discovery and explanation, and an abandonment of models of theory reduction in favor of accounts of explanatory reduction. Of particular current interest are philosophical accounts of complex explanations that appeal to different levels of organismal organization and use contributions from different biological disciplines. The essay lays out one model that views explanatory integration across different disciplines as being structured by scientific problems. I emphasize the philosophical need to take the explanatory aims pursued by different groups of scientists into account, as explanatory aims determine whether different explanations are competing or complementary and govern the dynamics of scientific practice, including interdisciplinary research. I distinguish different kinds of pluralism that philosophers have endorsed in the context of explanation in biology, and draw several implications for science education, especially the need to teach science as an interdisciplinary and dynamic practice guided by scientific problems and explanatory aims.     

Interdisciplinary Lessons for the Teaching of Biology from the Practice of Evo-Devo

Evolutionary developmental biology (Evo-devo) is a vibrant area of contemporary life science that should be (and is) increasingly incorporated into teaching curricula. Although the inclusion of this content is important for biological pedagogy at multiple levels of instruction, there are also philosophical lessons that can be drawn from the scientific practices found in Evo-devo. One feature of particular significance is the interdisciplinary nature of Evo-devo investigations and their resulting explanations. Instead of a single disciplinary approach being the most explanatory or fundamental, different methodologies from biological disciplines must be synthesized to generate empirically adequate explanations. Thus, Evo-devo points toward a non-reductionist epistemology in biology. I review three areas where these synthetic efforts become manifest as a result of Evo-devo’s practices (form versus function reasoning styles; problem-structured investigations; idealizations related to studying model organisms), and then sketch some possible applications to teaching biology. These philosophical considerations provide resources for life science educators to address (and challenge) key aspects of the National Science Education Standards and Benchmarks for Scientific Literacy.