Bioliteracy and Teaching Efficacy: What Biologists Can Learn from Physicists

Abstract

The introduction of the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) by David Hestenes and colleagues in 1992 produced a remarkable impact within the community of physics teachers. An instrument to measure student comprehension of the Newtonian concept of force, the FCI demonstrates that active learning leads to far superior student conceptual learning than didactic lectures. Compared to a working knowledge of physics, biological literacy and illiteracy have an even more direct, dramatic, and personal impact. They shape public research and reproductive health policies, the acceptance or rejection of technological advances, such as vaccinations, genetically modified foods and gene therapies, and, on the personal front, the reasoned evaluation of product claims and lifestyle choices. While many students take biology courses at both the secondary and the college levels, there is little in the way of reliable and valid assessment of the effectiveness of biological education. This lack has important consequences in terms of general bioliteracy and, in turn, for our society. Here we describe the beginning of a community effort to define what a bioliterate person needs to know and to develop, validate, and disseminate a tiered series of instruments collectively known as the Biology Concept Inventory (BCI), which accurately measures student comprehension of concepts in introductory, genetic, molecular, cell, and developmental biology. The BCI should serve as a lever for moving our current educational system in a direction that delivers a deeper conceptual understanding of the fundamental ideas upon which biology and biomedical sciences are based

Relationship between achievement and students' acceptance of evolution or creation in an upper‐level evolution course

“…We are extending the study reported here with the Conceptual Inventory of Natural Selection (CINS) (Anderson, Fisher, & Norman, 2002) to examine the influence of prior knowledge on learning evolution, and look forward to other researchers using this tool to examine different curricular strategies and questions similar to those we have addressed. Lawson (1983) stated that instructors must know if students lack essential prior declarative knowledge; the CINS and tools from the forthcoming Bioliteracy project (Klymkowsky, Garvin-Doxas, & Zeilik, 2003) will provide instructors with standardized devices for quantifying prior knowledge, similar to those available for physics and astronomy (e.g., Hestenes, Wells, & Swackhammer, 1992;Hufnagel, 2002, respectively).…”

The Impending Revolution in Undergraduate Science Education

“…Taking physics as an example, it is expected that the spread of active learning pedagogies through other sciences will be accelerated by the development of instruments comparable to the FCI, designed to measure student comprehension of concepts deemed to be important for understanding each of the scientific disciplines. An initial version of a Chemistry Concepts Inventory (CCI) has appeared (Mulford and Robinson, 2002), and a collaborative effort to create a Biological Concept Inventory (BCI) is currently underway (Klymkowsky et al, 2003).…”

Bridging the educational research‐teaching practice gap

“…MCQs are particularly useful for the development of concept inventories and related diagnostic tests that aim to assess students' conceptual understanding. The prevalence of such tests is expanding and they include, for example, the BCI [5,6], the conceptual inventory of natural selection [11], as well as question banks focusing on photosynthesis [12], diffusion and osmosis [13], cellular transport [14], and visualized biochemical structures [15]. In addition, Khodor et al [16] have formulated a hierarchical biology concept framework (BCF) that shows the relationships between concepts, highlights concepts that are difficult for novices to learn, and demonstrates what concepts are important for teachers to assess.…”

“…In addition, Khodor et al [16] have formulated a hierarchical biology concept framework (BCF) that shows the relationships between concepts, highlights concepts that are difficult for novices to learn, and demonstrates what concepts are important for teachers to assess. Klymkowsky et al [5] are developing items for the BCI that can be used to assess students' conceptual understanding of the fundamental ideas in molecular, cell, and developmental biology. These authors view their inventory as a ''lever for moving our current educational system in a direction that delivers a deeper conceptual understanding of the fundamental ideas upon which biology and biomedical sciences are based'' (p. 155).…”

“…[3,4]). In support of this, Klymkowsky et al [5], founders of the Biology Concept Inventory (BCI), 1 have stated that biology education requires instruments that go beyond testing rote learning. Fostering such a ''bioliteracy'' is intertwined with measuring conceptual understanding ''as a means of assessing student fluency in a subject area and as a measuring stick of, and impetus for curricular reform aimed at improved teaching and learning'' [5, p. 156].…”