The goal of this exploratory study was to analyze how beginning prospective secondary school teachers approached the analysis of student written responses to formative assessment probes. We sought to identify what elements of students' written work were noticed, what types of inferences of student understanding were built, and what these noticed elements and inferences told us about levels of sophistication in assessing student understanding. Our results are based on the qualitative analysis of the written evaluations of student work made by 32 prospective secondary school teachers enrolled in an introductory teacher preparation course at our institution. The results of this study suggest that analyzing teachers' assessment of student understanding requires paying attention to both domain‐neutral and domain‐dependent aspects of teacher reasoning. Domain‐neutral dimensions help characterize how a teacher frames the assessment of student understanding. Domain‐dependent dimensions characterize how the teacher attends to relevant disciplinary ideas. Our prospective teachers often focused on the description and qualification of student work, making fewer attempts to make sense of student ideas. However, study participants' abilities to generate inferences were varied and influenced by the nature of students' responses. Findings from this study provide a framework for scaffolding and evaluating progress in teachers' abilities to notice and interpret student work. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 52: 585–609, 2015.

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Complement, a complex protein system, plays an essential role in host defense through bacterial lysis, stimulation of phagocytosis, recruitment of immune cells to infected tissue, and promotion of the inflammatory response. Although complement is most well-characterized in serum, complement activity is also present in the lung. Here we further characterize the complement system in the normal and inflamed lung. By Western blot, C5, C6, and factor I were detected in bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) at lower levels than in serum, whereas C2 was detected at similar levels in BAL and serum. C4 binding protein (C4BP) was not detectable in BAL. Exposure to lipopolysaccharide (LPS) elevated levels of C1q, factor B, C2, C4, C5, C6, and C3 in human BAL and C3, C5, and factor B in mouse and rat BAL. Message for C1q-B, C1r, C1s, C2, C4, C3, C5, C6, factor B, and factor H, but not C9 or C4BP, was readily detectable by RT-PCR in normal mouse lung. Exposure to LPS enhanced factor B expression, decreased C5 expression, and did not affect C1q-B expression in mouse and rat lung. BAL from rats exposed to LPS had a greater ability to deposit C3b onto bacteria through complement activation than did BAL from control rats. In summary, these data demonstrate that complement levels, expression, and function are altered in acute lung injury and suggest that complement within the lung is regulated to promote opsonization of pathogens and limit potentially harmful inflammation.

This article explores how undergraduate students integrate knowledge in molecular biology. Analysis of interviews with introductory-level and upper-division students revealed patterns in how students sorted and connected ideas about DNA transcription, translation, and replication. Findings include differences in the nature of how students connected ideas.

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Providing opportunities for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics undergraduates to engage in authentic scientific practices is likely to influence their view of science and may impact their decision to persist through graduation. Laboratory courses provide a natural place to introduce students to scientific practices, but existing curricula often miss this opportunity by focusing on confirming science content rather than exploring authentic questions. Integrating authentic science within laboratory courses is particularly challenging at high-enrollment institutions and community colleges, where access to research-active faculty may be limiting. The Authentic Inquiry through Modeling in Biology (AIM-Bio) curriculum presented here engages students in authentic scientific practices through iterative cycles of model generation, testing, and revision. AIM-Bio university and community college students demonstrated their ability to propose diverse models for biological phenomena, formulate and address hypotheses by designing and conducting experiments, and collaborate with classmates to revise models based on experimental data. Assessments demonstrated that AIM-Bio students had an enhanced sense of project ownership and greater identification as scientists compared with students in existing laboratory courses. AIM-Bio students also experienced measurable gains in their nature of science understanding and skills for doing science. Our results suggest AIM-Bio as a potential alternative to more resource-intensive curricula with similar outcomes.

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Data interpretation is an important skill that should be developed within undergraduate biology courses. The authors present instruction in which students collaborate to understand authentic data using biological models. Research in this classroom utilized real-time student dialogues to reveal students’ data-interpretation strategies.