Development of the Biology Card Sorting Task to Measure Conceptual Expertise in Biology

There are widespread aspirations to focus undergraduate biology education on teaching students to think conceptually like biologists; however, there is a dearth of assessment tools designed to measure progress from novice to expert biological conceptual thinking. We present the development of a novel assessment tool, the Biology Card Sorting Task, designed to probe how individuals organize their conceptual knowledge of biology. While modeled on tasks from cognitive psychology, this task is unique in its design to test two hypothesized conceptual frameworks for the organization of biological knowledge: 1) a surface feature organization focused on organism type and 2) a deep feature organization focused on fundamental biological concepts. In this initial investigation of the Biology Card Sorting Task, each of six analytical measures showed statistically significant differences when used to compare the card sorting results of putative biological experts (biology faculty) and novices (non–biology major undergraduates). Consistently, biology faculty appeared to sort based on hypothesized deep features, while non–biology majors appeared to sort based on either surface features or nonhypothesized organizational frameworks. Results suggest that this novel task is robust in distinguishing populations of biology experts and biology novices and may be an adaptable tool for tracking emerging biology conceptual expertise.     

Epistemic Beliefs in Science—A Systematic Integration of Evidence From Multiple Studies

Educational Psychology Review - Recent research has integrated developmental and dimensional perspectives on epistemic beliefs by implementing an approach in which profiles of learners’...     

Evaluation of the Feasibility and Perceived Value of Integrating Learn the Signs. Act Early. Developmental Monitoring Resources in Early Head Start

Early Childhood Education Journal - Many children with developmental disabilities are not identified before age 3 years of age, preventing them from being able to fully benefit from early...     

The influence of question type,text availability,answer confidence and language background on student comprehension of an expository text

Reading is an essential activity for learning at university, but lecturers are not always experienced in setting appropriate questions to test understanding of texts. In other words, their assessments may not be ‘constructively aligned’ with the learning outcomes they hope their students to exhibit. In examination conditions, questions may be set with insufficient time for re-reading available texts, thus drawing more on students' powers of recall than on deeper learning and comprehension. Previous research has been undertaken on reading comprehension generally, but no research has yet explored the interaction of factors such as text availability (re-reading of texts), text layout, question type and respondents' language background. This study explores the correctness of 50 participants' responses to a set reading task based on an expository text, and participants' confidence in giving those answers, in relation to four factors: the effects of question type; text availability; text layout; and language background. The main findings are that non-native speakers of English have more difficulty and less confidence in answering implicit questions and that reviewing the text has a significant effect on response correctness for implicit questions. The form of text layout did not show a significant effect, however. Our results have implications for lecturers who set readings and questions for comprehension and others who use reading comprehension as part of their ‘hidden curriculum’. Further research in this area is required to determine more precisely the effects of language background.