Investigating the Effectiveness of an Inquiry-Based Intervention on Human Reproduction in Relation to Students’ Gender,Prior Knowledge and Motivation for Learning in Biology

Despite the importance of understanding how the human reproductive system works, adolescents worldwide exhibit weak conceptual understanding, which leads to serious risks, such as unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. Studies focusing on the development and evaluation of inquiry-based learning interventions, promoting the knowledge of human reproduction, are very few. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of an inquiry-based intervention on human reproduction in relation to students’ gender, prior knowledge and motivation for learning in biology. Data collection methods included students’ pre- and post-tests, evaluating students’ conceptual understanding regarding human reproduction, and measurements of students’ motivation employing the Motivational Learning Environment survey. The sample for the pre- and post-test conceptual understanding data included the whole population of the 7th graders in Cyprus (n = 6465). Students’ motivation data were collected from a representative sample of the entire 7th graders population (n = 946 students). Statistical analyses indicated a statistically significant increase in students’ conceptual understanding as well as in their motivation for learning in biology. However, students’ gender, prior knowledge and initial motivation for learning in biology seemed to mediate the effectiveness of the inquiry-based intervention. All of these variables are deemed, therefore, as of great importance for the design, implementation and evaluation of biology teaching interventions.     

Hands-on or Video-based Learning with ANTicipation? A Comparative Approach to Identifying Student Motivation and Learning Enjoyment During a Lesson about Ants

The observation of living animals in school laboratories provides authentic views of biological research. Various studies stress the importance of primary experiences in biology classes. However, educational films may serve as an alternative in some cases. The aim of this study was to investigate student motivation before and after treatments, including (1) an educational film, (2) a hands-on activity with living animals accompanied by an educational film and (3) a hands-on activity with living animals. We investigated the influence of teaching method, gender and class level on student motivation and learning enjoyment. In all treatments, Temnothorax ants were addressed, which can be easily kept and observed. This paper is within the scope of a longitudinal project based on the concept of ‘ant research’ in class. Students (N = 140) from six classes (lower and intermediate secondary school levels) participated in the study. Student motivation was measured using a two-stage test design, including a standardised questionnaire on current motivation and a test on learning enjoyment. The findings of this study suggest that the younger students prefer hands-on activities, while students at an intermediate secondary school level are more interested in video-based learning. Since the combination of hands-on activity and video yielded the best results, the potential of using videos as facilitators for hands-on learning is discussed.     

Challenges in understanding meiosis: fostering metaconceptual awareness among university biology students

ABSTRACT

In this study, firstly, university biology students’ conceptual understanding and potential misconceptions concerning meiosis were studied. Secondly, an easily applicable drawing task was used to foster students’ metaconceptual awareness which would help them to reach conceptual change. A quasi-experimental design with a non-equivalent control group was conducted. The students (N = 82) were divided into experimental and control groups. The control groups attended traditional teaching, i.e. lectures with practicals, whilst the experimental groups had an additional activating task before practicals. In the activating task, the students drew the selected phases of meiosis and marked given concepts of meiosis in the drawing. The drawings were scored and the solutions were discussed in detail with the students. After the activating task, the traditional practicals were held for both groups. After a week, both experimental and control groups were given the same task. The results show that students in the experimental group understood meiosis significantly better than the control group, who had more misconceptions after the instruction compared to the experimental group. Thus, fostering students’ metaconceptual awareness is crucial and relatively easy to apply, also in higher education.     

Native language background and academic achievement: Is socioemotional well-being a mediator?

This study examined the extent to which socioemotional well-being mediated the relationship between language status and achievement, while exploring variability in this relationship based on informant (student versus teacher reports of socioemotional problems) and native language background (Spanish-speaking English language learners [ELLs] versus ELLs from Asian-language backgrounds). Participants included 9,046 fifth-grade students from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort of 1998. Results from structural equation modeling showed that Spanish-speaking ELLs reported more social-emotional problems as compared to English-monolingual (EM) and Asian-language ELL classmates in third grade, which partially explained their lower achievement levels in fifth grade. The model accounted for approximately 34% of the variance in students’ academic achievement in fifth grade (R² = .343, p < .001). When comparing ELL and EM students, results differed when using teachers’ versus students’ reports of socioemotional well-being. For both Spanish-speaking and Asian-language ELLs, teachers perceived fewer social and emotional difficulties than the students themselves reported in comparison to their EM classmates.     

Learning progress in evolution theory: climbing a ladder or roaming a landscape?

The objective of this naturalistic study was to explore, model and visualise the learning progress of 13-year-old students in the domain of evolution theory. Data were collected under actual classroom conditions and with a sample size of 107 learners, which followed a teaching unit on Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Before and after the teaching sequence, the students wrote texts that explained an evolutionary phenomenon. Their explanations for evolutionary change were analysed and categorised into nine different patterns. Furthermore, we contrasted these explanation patterns with the corresponding scientific conceptions. This resulted in five conceptual frontiers, each of them marking one major learning task. The actual learning progress of the sample group was visualised as learning trajectories on a conceptual landscape. Our findings indicate that learning to explain evolution is a very individual process where the students depart from several distinct ideas and take different trajectories. The method of mapping a content-specific learning progress within a mental landscape may be advantageous for other domains of science teaching, too.     

The effect of using a case study on the academic achievement of students in learning about the topic of ‘Vitamins’

This study investigates the impact of the Case-Based Learning (CBL) method for the topic of ‘B6, B9 and B12 Vitamins’ on students’ academic achievement in a biochemistry course for an associate degree level in health. To this end, a case study with the title ‘The Reasons for Depression: Do We Know What They Are?’ was developed and implemented. The study had a one-group pre-test and post-test research design. The ‘Vitamins’ Achievement Test’ (VAT) and a Structured Interview Form were used as data collection tools. First-year students of Medical Laboratory Techniques at the Ahmet Erdogan Vocational School of Health Services at Bulent Ecevit University (N = 34) who were aged between18 and 20 made up the study group. The VAT and the Structured Interview Form were analysed using content analysis and the paired-samples t-test was used for the VAT. The results indicated that the frequency of students’ responses in the ‘clear understanding’ category improved in the VAT post-test and it was concluded that there was a significant positive difference in the post-test scores of students. The results of the structured interview indicated that most of the students had positive opinions about the method, material and case study.     

Biology-specific vocabulary: students’ understanding and lecturers’ expectations of student understanding

Abstract

The current A-level biology curriculum includes a broad coverage of all the biosciences which demands knowledge of a wide range of biological vocabulary. Students (n = 184) from two UK universities were presented with a list of vocabulary, associated with a ‘Revise Biology’ text which highlighted key terms that students should know. Lecturers (n = 26) were asked which of these terms they expected students to know, or be aware of. Findings revealed that students’ claimed knowledge of vocabulary exceeded lecturer expectations. In addition, there were a number of terms which students did not understand and lecturers did not expect them to know, which could be removed from A-level biology courses. This is discussed in relation to whether A-level curricula need to be so content heavy and whether lecturers would benefit from knowing more about their students’ knowledge of discipline-specific terms.     

Separating ‘Inquiry Questions’ and ‘Techniques’ to Help Learners Move between the How and the Why of Biology Practical Work

School science practical activities have been criticised for exposing learners to a series of phenomena disconnected from the conceptual frameworks needed to understand them. Such activities are successful in the ‘domain of observables’ but not the ‘domain of ideas’. Few resources exist for classroom teachers wishing to improve the effectiveness of practical activities in the domain of ideas. This report describes an action research project to develop a scaffold for biology practical lessons. This scaffold separates inquiry questions and the techniques needed to address them, and thus combines two approaches to scaffolding in a single tool (‘problematising’ and ‘reducing the degrees of freedom’). Analysis of the speech of 16–17 year olds in the study class (n = 23) was used to assess their engagement in the domain of ideas. Following the scaffold’s introduction, the learners were found to speak more about relevant ideas and concepts during practical activities. When the scaffold was partially faded, the learners continued to demonstrate engagement with the domain of ideas. The approach reported here would seem to have much potential for supporting learning from ‘minds-on’ biology practical work in a variety of contexts.     

Student conceptions about energy in biological contexts

The concept of energy serves biologists as a powerful analytical model to describe phenomena that occurs in the natural world. Due to the concept’s relevance, educational standards of different countries identify energy as a core idea for the teaching and learning of biology and other science subjects. However, previous research on students’ energy understanding has mostly focused on physics contexts. This cross-sectional study extends insight to the field by providing a systematic analysis of students’ (N = 30, grades 5, 7, 9, 11) conceptions about energy in biological contexts. In order to connect the findings to previous research, the study analyses conceptions about four energy aspects that are regarded as central for understanding the concept in different disciplinary contexts, i.e. (1) energy forms/sources, (2) transfer/transformation, (3) degradation/dissipation and (4) energy conservation. The findings identify substantial changes in students’ conceptions about energy between the different grade levels, but also highlight conceptions that students consistently employed across age groups. The results are discussed in the light of previous research on students’ progressing energy understanding and the connection of their energy understanding across different disciplinary contexts. Lastly, the article provides implications for the further development of energy teaching in biological contexts.     

Considering the levels of biological organisation when teaching carbon flows in a terrestrial ecosystem

ABSTRACT

Students often have misconceptions about terrestrial carbon flows and there is a lack of coherence in students’ explanations regarding the different levels of biological organisation at which these processes occur. In this study, problem-based teaching materials on the topic of terrestrial carbon flows were developed and tested with 15 students 18–19 years old (grade 12) using a pre/post-test design. Students focused on specific carbon flows in an ecosystem at the macro level (e.g. CO₂ fixation and heterotrophic respiration) including specific related concepts at the micro level (e.g. photosynthesis and cellular respiration). The findings indicate that the teaching materials improved the students’ understanding of terrestrial carbon flows and their ability to reason across the different levels of biological organisation. On the basis of these findings, implications for teaching terrestrial carbon flows in biological education are discussed.     

The associations between social-media use and academic performance among undergraduate students in biology

Recent studies have been conducted in regards to the use of social- media by students and how it can impact his/her academic performance. However, much of this research has been focused on how to use social-media websites in the classroom to facilitate student learning. Therefore, we aimed to address how the use of social-media can be either beneficial or detrimental to undergraduate students, with respect to their academic performance. We distributed a survey to 234 participants, all attending the same four-year university. Throughout the survey, the students self-reported their grade point average (GPA), study habits, and social-media use. We established that female students use social-media websites more often than their male peers, and using a Pearson’s correlation, we found that GPA negatively correlated with the number of social-media websites to which students subscribe (p < 0.05). Furthermore, we found that using more social-media websites correlated positively with the amount of time students spend using social-media platforms on a daily basis. Although previous studies indicate that social-media websites should be incorporated into the classroom, our results suggest that this addition may have negative effects on the study habits and academic performance of undergraduate students, particularly those within the field of biological sciences.     

Virtual laboratories in science education: students’ motivation and experiences in two tertiary biology courses

Potential benefits of simulations and virtual laboratory exercises in natural sciences have been both theorised and studied recently. This study reports findings from a pilot study on student attitude, motivation and self-efficacy when using the virtual laboratory programme Labster. The programme allows interactive learning about the workflows and procedures of biological and biochemical experiments, the operation of relevant apparatuses, including the ability to adjust parameters, and the production of results. The programme was used as supplement to mandatory laboratory exercises in two undergraduate courses (i. microbiology and ii. pharmaceutical toxicology) at the University of Southern Denmark. With a theoretical basis in motivational theories, students’ (n = 73) motivation and attitude towards the virtual exercises were evaluated. After completing virtual laboratory cases, the students felt significantly more confident and comfortable operating laboratory equipment, but they did not feel more motivated to engage in virtual laboratories compared to real laboratories. Teachers observed that students were able to participate in discussions at higher levels than in previous years where the programme was not used. The study concludes that virtual laboratories have the potential to improve students’ pre-laboratory preparation.     

Assessing Parent Perceptions of School Fit: The Development and Measurement Qualities of a Survey Scale

Students whose school environment fits their developmental needs also typically experience academic success and increased motivation. Most investigations of school fit, which focus on teachers’ and students’ perceptions, have found a general decline in fit across the transition from elementary to middle school. However, little research has examined the school-child fit from the parent perspective. In this article, we first detail the development process behind a new survey measure of parent perceptions of school fit. Second, using three online panel-based samples of parents from across the country (n₁ = 323, n₂ = 188, n₃ = 1,033), we evaluate the scale's measurement properties and conduct exploratory analyses examining grade-level and income-based differences on reported school fit. Finally, in line with previous research, we find that parents of middle school children perceived statistically significantly worse fit than parents of elementary school children. Among parents of high school students, we found that, on average, high-income parents perceive statistically significantly better fit than low-income parents.     

Veterinary Students’ Beliefs About Animal Sentience: What Role Does Gender Play?

ABSTRACT

Across a 15-year period, annual cohorts of first-year veterinary science students (n = 1,380; 77% female) at a British university completed the Belief in Animal Sentience (BiAS) questionnaire, in which they reported their beliefs about the sentience (capacity to feel) of ten species: dogs, cats, lions, pigs, sheep, rats, rabbits, chickens, bees, and spiders. On the basis of previous findings regarding people’s beliefs about animals’ capacities for mind, it was hypothesized that female students would ascribe more human-like sentience to animals than would male students. It was also hypothesized that the proportion of female students in each of the cohorts studied would have an influence on the beliefs of the year group as a whole: cohorts comprising a larger percentage of women would have higher animal sentience beliefs in both males and females. The data were analyzed using two-level regression models to concurrently investigate the effects of individual respondents’ gender and the percentage of female students in their cohort. Compared with their male counterparts, female veterinary students across all the cohorts studied attributed significantly higher (more human-like) sentience to each of the ten animals listed in the BiAS questionnaire, but the percentage of female students in each year group was not associated with students’ sentience beliefs. It was also found that childhood experience of having owned pet cats or dogs was related to students’ beliefs about the sentience of these species, although this association did not contribute to the differences found between male and female respondents. Given the increasing number of women entering the veterinary profession, and previous findings that beliefs about animals’ capacities for sentience may be associated with the veterinary care they are given, we conclude that gender differences in sentience beliefs could have a significant impact on the future of veterinary practice and patient welfare.     

Growth patterns of Mytilopsis leucophaeata,an invasive biofouling bivalve in Europe

Abstract

For the first time, growth of Mytilopsis leucophaeata, an important European fouling species, was investigated. By means of growth cages, individual shell growth of three cohorts, with, respectively, initial shell lengths of ≤5 mm, 10 mm and 15 mm, was monitored in the harbour of Antwerp, Belgium, during 2003 – 2004. M. leucophaeata followed an oscillatory growth pattern with a single summer growing period per year (May to August). Growth decreased during wintertime, but never ceased completely. M. leucophaeata has an average growth rate of <3 – 6 mm year^?1. Temperature was found to be the main environmental factor affecting growth. The von Bertalanffy growth function was used to model growth of individuals ≤5 mm, resulting in L_∞ = 16.7 mm and K = 0.56. Based on a combination of growth of all three cohorts, the hypothetical growth of an average individual mussel could be modelled over a 5-year period, resulting in a maximum length >19 mm with a growth rate of 0.41. Its longevity (more than 5 years) and the positive effect of higher water temperatures on growth, combined with its high resistance to chlorination, provides M. leucophaeata with a high potential for severe and long-lasting biofouling     

Constructing a Cotton-Ball Catapult: An Interdisciplinary STS Learning Experience

The need for all students to develop a stronger ability to express their science knowledge in writing is important. In this article, the authors take you on a journey in an elementary school classroom with tools to help foster deeper learning and stronger writing skills in science content. With many students in high school required to pass end-of-semester science exams to receive a diploma, teaching writing at an early age across various content areas is an even more critical component of today’s curriculum. Presenting curriculum material through multiple means (Universal Design for Learning-Representation) allows students to gain information through a learning approach that best fits the students’ learning needs. The authors examine multiple means of representing science curriculum to engage students in creating detailed and comprehensive concept maps and to provide supportive scientific evidence in written explanations as they gain more content knowledge in science.     

Learning from Instructional Explanations: Effects of Prompts Based on the Active-Constructive-Interactive Framework

Although instructional explanations are commonly provided when learners are introduced to new content, they often fail because they are not integrated into effective learning activities. The recently introduced active-constructive-interactive framework posits an effectiveness hierarchy in which interactive learning activities are at the top; these are then followed by constructive and active learning activities, respectively. Against this background, we combined instructional explanations with different types of prompts that were designed to elicit these learning activities and tested the central predictions of the active-constructive-interactive framework. In Experiment 1, N = 83 students were randomly assigned to one of four combinations of instructional explanations and prompts. To test the active < constructive learning hypothesis, the learners received either (1) complete explanations and engaging prompts designed to elicit active activities or (2) explanations that were reduced by inferences and inference prompts designed to engage learners in constructing the withheld information. Furthermore, in order to explore how interactive learning activities can be elicited, we gave the learners who had difficulties in constructing the prompted inferences adapted remedial explanations with either (3) unspecific engaging prompts or (4) revision prompts. In support of the active < constructive learning hypothesis, we found that the learners who received reduced explanations and inference prompts outperformed the learners who received complete explanations and engaging prompts. Moreover, revision prompts were more effective in eliciting interactive learning activities than engaging prompts. In Experiment 2, N = 40 students were randomly assigned to either (1) a reduced explanations and inference prompts or (2) a reduced explanations and inference prompts plus adapted remedial explanations and revision prompts condition. In support of the constructive < interactive learning hypothesis, the learners who received adapted remedial explanations and revision prompts as add-ons to reduced explanations and inference prompts acquired more conceptual knowledge.     

Trichoderma longibrachiatum as an antagonist of Botrydiplodia theobromae

The antagonistic potential of Trichoderma longibrachiatum against the pathogen Botrydiplodia theobromae was examined in vitro. Both fungi were paired on 9 cm Petri plates of acidified potato dextrose agar (APDA). Three pairing methods were employed, viz., ‘inoculating antagonist before pathogen’, ‘inoculating pathogen before antagonist’ and ‘simultaneous inoculation of pathogen and antagonist’. Radial growth (cm) of both fungi were later analysed using the GLM Procedure of SAS. Growth inhibition of B. theobromae by T. longibrachiatum in all pairing methods was significantly different from control (P = 0.05, R ² = 0.89). Growth inhibition of the pathogen was best when using ‘inoculation of antagonist before pathogen’. Duration of pairing (DAP) and pairing method are both critical to significant antagonistic impact of T. longibrachiatum on B. theobromae (P > 0.0001). Inhibition mechanism includes competition for space and nutrients. T. longibrachiatum could thus be a promising antagonist of B. theobromae.     

Biology student teachers’ dialogic talk in inquiry-based instruction

ABSTRACT

Inquiry-based learning has generally accepted by scholars as a most effective teaching approach in biology education. The talk during inquiry-based teaching needs to be practiced. There is less evidence how student teachers talk with students during their inquiry-based biology instruction. This knowledge is needed in supporting student teachers to develop their teachership in biology education. In this qualitative case study, the dialogic talk of biology student teachers (N = 6) was studied in the context of inquiry-based lessons in lower secondary school. The student teachers’ lessons were video and audio recorded and the data was analyzed using content analysis. The student teachers used dialogic talk in their inquiry-based instruction only occasionally, mainly in the examination and the conclusion stages. During the introduction stage, dialogic talk was less used and it was mainly explaining and instructing the content. In the examination stage, student teachers also guided students and stated facts. During the conclusion stage, student teachers mainly explained and also evaluated students’ statements. The lesson’s topics and methods used in inquiry-based learning may enable the dialogic talk of student teacher to some extent. However, teacher education should focus more on scaffolding student teachers’ talk with their students in all kinds of inquiry approaches.