Biology Education Research: Lessons and Future Directions

This feature draws on a 2012 National Research Council report to highlight some of the insights that discipline-based education research in general—and biology education research in particular—have provided into the challenges of undergraduate science education. It identifies strategies for overcoming those challenges and future directions for biology education research.Biologists have long been concerned about the quality of undergraduate biology education. Indeed, some biology education journals, such as the American Biology Teacher, have been in existence since the 1930s. Early contributors to these journals addressed broad questions about science learning, such as whether collaborative or individual learning was more effective and the value of conceptualization over memorization. Over time, however, biology faculty members have begun to study increasingly sophisticated questions about teaching and learning in the discipline. These scholars, often called biology education researchers, are part of a growing field of inquiry called discipline-based education research (DBER).DBER investigates both fundamental and applied aspects of teaching and learning in a given discipline; our emphasis here is on several science disciplines and engineering. The distinguishing feature of DBER is deep disciplinary knowledge of what constitutes expertise and expert-like understanding in a discipline. This knowledge has the potential to guide research focused on the most important concepts in a discipline and offers a framework for interpreting findings about students’ learning and understanding in that discipline. While DBER investigates teaching and learning in a given discipline, it is informed by and complementary to general research on human learning and cognition and can build on findings from K–12 science education research.DBER is emerging as a field of inquiry from programs of research that have developed somewhat independently in various disciplines in the sciences and engineering. Although biology education research (BER) has emerged more recently than similar efforts in physics, chemistry, or engineering education research, it is making contributions to the understanding of how students learn and gain expertise in biology. These contributions, together with those that DBER has made in physics and astronomy, chemistry, engineering, and the geosciences, are the focus of a 2012 report by the National Research Council (NRC, 2012 ).1 For biologists who are interested in education research, the report is a useful reference, because it offers the first comprehensive synthesis of the emerging body of BER and highlights the ways in which BER findings are similar to those in other disciplines. In this essay, we draw on the NRC report to highlight some of the insights that DBER in general and BER in particular have provided into effective instructional practices and undergraduate learning, and to point to some directions for the future. The views in this essay are ours as editors of the report and do not represent the official views of the Committee on the Status, Contributions, and Future Directions of Discipline-Based Education Research; the NRC; or the National Science Foundation (NSF).     

Integration of Physics and Biology: Synergistic Undergraduate Education for the 21st Century

This is an exciting time to be a biologist. The advances in our field and the many opportunities to expand our horizons through interaction with other disciplines are intellectually stimulating. This is as true for people tasked with helping the field move forward through support of research and education projects that serve the nation''s needs as for those carrying out that research and educating the next generation of biologists. So, it is a pleasure to contribute to this edition of CBE—Life Sciences Education. This column will cover three aspects of the interactions of physics and biology as seen from the viewpoint of four members of the Division of Undergraduate Education of the National Science Foundation. The first section places the material to follow in context. The second reviews some of the many interdisciplinary physics–biology projects we support. The third highlights mechanisms available for supporting new physics–biology undergraduate education projects based on ideas that arise, focusing on those needing and warranting outside support to come to fruition.     

Evaluating a Modeling Curriculum by Using Heuristics for Productive Disciplinary Engagement

The BIO2010 report provided a compelling argument for the need to create learning experiences for undergraduate biology students that are more authentic to modern science. The report acknowledged the need for research that could help practitioners successfully create and reform biology curricula with this goal in mind. Our objective in this article was to explore how a set of six design heuristics could be used to evaluate the potential of curricula to support productive learning experiences for science students. We drew on data collected during a long-term study of an undergraduate traineeship that introduced students to mathematical modeling in the context of modern biological problems. We present illustrative examples from this curriculum that highlight the ways in which three heuristics—instructor role-modeling, holding students to scientific norms, and providing students with opportunities to practice these norms—consistently supported learning across the curriculum. We present a more detailed comparison of two different curricular modules and explain how differences in student authority, problem structure, and access to resources contributed to differences in productive engagement by students in these modules. We hope that our analysis will help practitioners think in more concrete terms about how to achieve the goals set forth by BIO2010.     

Investigating Undergraduate Science Students’ Conceptions and Misconceptions of Ocean Acidification

Scientific research exploring ocean acidification has grown significantly in past decades. However, little science education research has investigated the extent to which undergraduate science students understand this topic. Of all undergraduate students, one might predict science students to be best able to understand ocean acidification. What conceptions and misconceptions of ocean acidification do these students hold? How does their awareness and knowledge compare across disciplines? Undergraduate biology, chemistry/biochemistry, and environmental studies students, and science faculty for comparison, were assessed on their awareness and understanding. Results revealed low awareness and understanding of ocean acidification among students compared with faculty. Compared with biology or chemistry/biochemistry students, more environmental studies students demonstrated awareness of ocean acidification and identified the key role of carbon dioxide. Novel misconceptions were also identified. These findings raise the question of whether undergraduate science students are prepared to navigate socioenvironmental issues such as ocean acidification.     

Educational Challenges of Molecular Life Science: Characteristics and Implications for Education and Research

Molecular life science is one of the fastest-growing fields of scientific and technical innovation, and biotechnology has profound effects on many aspects of daily life—often with deep, ethical dimensions. At the same time, the content is inherently complex, highly abstract, and deeply rooted in diverse disciplines ranging from “pure sciences,” such as math, chemistry, and physics, through “applied sciences,” such as medicine and agriculture, to subjects that are traditionally within the remit of humanities, notably philosophy and ethics. Together, these features pose diverse, important, and exciting challenges for tomorrow''s teachers and educational establishments. With backgrounds in molecular life science research and secondary life science teaching, we (Tibell and Rundgren, respectively) bring different experiences, perspectives, concerns, and awareness of these issues. Taking the nature of the discipline as a starting point, we highlight important facets of molecular life science that are both characteristic of the domain and challenging for learning and education. Of these challenges, we focus most detail on content, reasoning difficulties, and communication issues. We also discuss implications for education research and teaching in the molecular life sciences.     

A validation framework for science learning progression research

This article provides a validation framework for research on the development and use of science Learning Progressions (LPs). The framework describes how evidence from various sources can be used to establish an interpretive argument and a validity argument at five stages of LP research—development, scoring, generalisation, extrapolation, and use. The interpretation argument contains the interpretation (i.e. the LP and conclusions about students’ proficiency generated based on the LP) and the use of the LP. The validity argument specifies how the evidence from various sources supports the interpretation and the use of the LP. Examples from our prior and current research are used to illustrate the validation activities and analyses that can be conducted at each of the five stages. When conducting an LP study, researchers may use one or more validation activities or analyses that are theoretically necessary and practically applicable in their specific research contexts.     

化学与社会教学模式改革与创新

化学与社会课程教学在工科院校自然学科教学中占有重要地位。本课程将化学与物理、生物多个学科都紧密相连。在与其他专业相结合的过程中,可以形成某个新的科研领域,因此对化学与社会课程的深入探究将是推动科学技术和社会发展的重要动力。基于化学与社会课程的重要性,高校一直以来都十分重视该课程教学工作的开展,并将其纳入到教学改革计划中。但受各方面因素的影响,使得目前高校化学与社会课程在教学过程中仍存在一定的不足,从而影响了课程作用的充分发挥。为此,文章对当前化学与社会教学中存在的问题进行了论述,进而提出策略,为化学与社会的教学发展提供更多参考。     

Toward Integration: From Quantitative Biology to Mathbio-Biomath?

In response to the call of BIO2010 for integrating quantitative skills into undergraduate biology education, 30 Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Program Directors at the 2006 HHMI Program Directors Meeting established a consortium to investigate, implement, develop, and disseminate best practices resulting from the integration of math and biology. With the assistance of an HHMI-funded mini-grant, led by Karl Joplin of East Tennessee State University, and support in institutional HHMI grants at Emory and University of Delaware, these institutions held a series of summer institutes and workshops to document progress toward and address the challenges of implementing a more quantitative approach to undergraduate biology education. This report summarizes the results of the four summer institutes (2007–2010). The group developed four draft white papers, a wiki site, and a listserv. One major outcome of these meetings is this issue of CBE—Life Sciences Education, which resulted from proposals at our 2008 meeting and a January 2009 planning session. Many of the papers in this issue emerged from or were influenced by these meetings.     

From Vision to Change: Educational Initiatives and Research at the Intersection of Physics and Biology

In this editorial we link the articles published in this Special Issue with the framework from Vision and Change and summarize findings from the editorial process of assembling the Special Issue.The authors of Vision and Change (American Association for the Advancement of Science [AAAS], 2011 ) issued the following call to action to biologists, physicists, chemists, and mathematicians:

To ensure that all students graduate with a basic level of scientific literacy and meet the challenges raised in Bio 2010: Transforming Undergraduate Education for Future Research Biologists (2003), Scientific Foundations for Future Physicians: Report of the AAMC-HHMI Committee (2009), A New Biology for the 21st Century (2009), and similar reports, biologists, physicists, chemists, and mathematicians need to look thoughtfully at ways they can introduce interdisciplinary approaches into their gateway courses. (AAAS, 2011 , p 54)

The articles that comprise this special issue of CBE—Life Sciences Education (LSE) take important steps toward responding to this call by describing teaching and learning at the intersection of biology and physics. Broadly defined, the work aims to encourage the development of genuine interdisciplinary understanding, or “the capacity to integrate knowledge and modes of thinking in two or more disciplines or established areas of expertise to produce a cognitive advancement … in ways that would have been impossible or unlikely through single disciplinary means” (Boix Mansilla and Duraisingh, 2007 , p. 219). Indeed, many of the most exciting recent breakthroughs in the life sciences have occurred at the intersection of these established disciplines. Physical laws help to predict, describe, and explain biological phenomena occurring at molecular to ecosystem levels, and the development of new physical tools helps to visualize these phenomena in new and informative ways. Thus, the Vision and Change report stresses the urgency for undergraduate biology and physics educators to develop, assess, and revise content materials, pedagogical strategies, and epistemological perspectives for encouraging student learning in interdisciplinary biology and physics classes.We received more than 50 abstracts in response to the call for this special issue, and we are pleased to publish 10 Articles, four Essays, and eight Features reflecting the state of educational transformation at the intersection of biology and physics. Several articles describe integration of physics into biology curriculum or biology into physics curriculum that goes beyond simple provision of examples from the respective disciplines (e.g., Batiza et al., Christensen et al., Svoboda Gouvea et al., O’Shea et al., Thompson et al., Breckler et al.). A number of articles address cross-cutting themes, such as problem solving (e.g., Hoskinson et al.) and energy (e.g., Cooper and Klymkowsky, Svoboda Gouvea et al.), the application of mathematical laws to biological phenomena (e.g., Redish and Cooke), epistemology (e.g., Watkins and Elby), and assessment as a powerful tool for driving curriculum change, in this case the integration of physics and biological thinking (e.g., Svoboda Gouvea et al., Momsen et al., Thompson et al.). Other articles reflect research crossing disciplinary boundaries to introduce research approaches (e.g., Watkins and Elby, Momsen et al.) or innovative curriculum models (e.g., Manthey and Brewe, Donovan et al., Thompson et al.) to help students develop reasoning strategies that move beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries. The Hillborn and Friedlander essay highlights potential impacts of cross-disciplinary collaboration in education on the revised Medical College Admission Test.We were pleased by the number of articles coauthored by physicists and biologists working in teams to examine and recommend new directions for the future of biology education. These teams brought a richness and depth of knowledge in both disciplines that made it possible to move instruction and research forward at the intersection of the disciplines. Together, these articles start to provide the evidence base for responding to the calls for interdisciplinary teaching and learning. Further, they provide opportunities to compare and contrast education and epistemologies in biology and physics, allowing for more informed integration of knowledge from these disciplines.     

A Comparison of Student Teachers' Beliefs from Four Different Science Teaching Domains Using a Mixed Methods Design

The study presented in this paper integrates data from four combined research studies, which are both qualitative and quantitative in nature. The studies describe freshman science student teachers' beliefs about teaching and learning. These freshmen intend to become teachers in Germany in one of four science teaching domains (secondary biology, chemistry, and physics, respectively, as well as primary school science). The qualitative data from the first study are based on student teachers' drawings of themselves in teaching situations. It was formulated using Grounded Theory to test three scales: Beliefs about Classroom Organisation, Beliefs about Teaching Objectives, and Epistemological Beliefs. Three further quantitative studies give insight into student teachers' curricular beliefs, their beliefs about the nature of science itself, and about the student- and/or teacher-centredness of science teaching. This paper describes a design to integrate all these data within a mixed methods framework. The aim of the current study is to describe a broad, triangulated picture of freshman science student teachers' beliefs about teaching and learning within their respective science teaching domain. The study reveals clear tendencies between the sub-groups. The results suggest that freshman chemistry and—even more pronouncedly—freshman physics student teachers profess quite traditional beliefs about science teaching and learning. Biology and primary school student teachers express beliefs about their subjects which are more in line with modern educational theory. The mixed methods approach towards the student teachers' beliefs is reflected upon and implications for science education and science teacher education are discussed.     

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.     

中学开设综合理科课程的必要性

综合理科就是将原来的物理、化学、生物、地理(自然地理部分)等分科课程,融合成为一门综合课程.学科内容范围进行如此变革,是义务教育、素质教育的需要;是社会进步、科学发展的必然要求;符合教育学、心理学的观点;也符合社会实际、实践的需要.     

The place of qualitative research in science education

This article develops a way to conceptualize the complementarity of quantitative and qualitative research in science education. The differing sets of metaphysical presuppositions that give rise to the two approaches are systematically examined by using Stephen Pepper's “world hypotheses”: it is argued and demonstrated that quantitative research is formist/ mechanist in its metaphysical preoccupation, while qualitative research is contextualist/organicist. The vehicle for demonstrating how these metaphysical systems actually influence science education research is Stephen Toulmin's “argument pattern.” It is demonstrated through analysis of examples that quantitative and qualitatitive research reports follow the same pattern of argument, even though the metaphysical roots behind the approaches, which control their differing methodologies and other features, are obviously different. Given the emergence of qualitative research styles, implications are explored for the development of science education research as a total enterprise. Special attention is paid to the problems of appraising the quality of qualitative research reports and to the need for a comprehensive view of what constitutes legitimate research in science education.     

Structure Matters: Twenty-One Teaching Strategies to Promote Student Engagement and Cultivate Classroom Equity

A host of simple teaching strategies—referred to as “equitable teaching strategies” and rooted in research on learning—can support biology instructors in striving for classroom equity and in teaching all their students, not just those who are already engaged, already participating, and perhaps already know the biology being taught.     

Regulatory Evolution and Theoretical Arguments in Evolutionary Biology

The cis-regulatory hypothesis is one of the most important claims of evolutionary developmental biology. In this paper I examine the theoretical argument for cis-regulatory evolution and its role within evolutionary theorizing. I show that, although the argument has some weaknesses, it acts as a useful example for the importance of current scientific debates for science education.     

Defining and Measuring College and Career Readiness: A Validation Framework

This article reviews the intended uses of these college‐ and career‐readiness assessments with the goal of articulating an appropriate validity argument to support such uses. These assessments differ fundamentally from today's state assessments employed for state accountability. Current assessments are used to determine if students have mastered the knowledge and skills articulated in state standards; content standards, performance levels, and student impact often differ across states. College‐ and career‐readiness assessments will be used to determine if students are prepared to succeed in postsecondary education. Do students have a high probability of academic success in college or career‐training programs? As with admissions, placement, and selection tests, the primary interpretations that will be made from test scores concern future performance. Statistical evidence between test scores and performance in postsecondary education will become an important form of evidence. A validation argument should first define the construct (college and career readiness) and then define appropriate criterion measures. This article reviews alternative definitions and measures of college and career readiness and contrasts traditional standard‐setting methods with empirically based approaches to support a validation argument.