Energy Connections and Misconnections across Chemistry and Biology

Abstract

To inform future interdisciplinary course reform, undergraduate students coenrolled in introductory chemistry and cell and molecular biology were interviewed regarding their perceptions of the integration of energy both within and across the disciplines and how they attempted to accommodate and reconcile different disciplinary approaches to energy.

Transfer: A Review for Biology and the Life Sciences

“…Their schema for what information is relevant in a biology class is different for what information is relevant in a chemistry class. Kohn et al (2018) found that students felt energy was a central concept in their chemistry classes, but not their biology classes. They therefore tended to discount energy concepts in their biology classes.…”

“…Students' ability to recognize that a previously learned concept applies in a new context depends on their attentional processes as well as their familiarity with, and recognition memory of, the concept. For example, energy is a central concept in physics, chemistry, and biology (see Kohn et al, 2018). Students in a biology class, however, may fail to transfer their understanding of energy as discussed in the chemistry class, simply because they were struggling to pay attention during their biology class.…”

“…Within the life sciences, students struggle to transfer related concepts within courses, like the concept of chromosome structure within cell biology as it relates to mitosis versus gene expression (Newman et al, 2012). Furthermore, students struggle to recognize and transfer fundamental concepts across disciplines, like recognizing that the concept of energy in a chemistry class is relevant to discussions about energy in a biology class (Kohn et al, 2018). The curriculum, whether it be the order concepts are taught in primary and secondary school or the order of courses and prerequisites in a higher education program of study, is built with the expectation and understanding that students will transfer what they have learned from relevant course work to aid in their understanding of the life sciences as a whole.…”

Connecting Structure–Property and Structure–Function Relationships across the Disciplines of Chemistry and Biology: Exploring Student Perceptions

“…And yet, even without instructional or curricular supports, these students not only made substantive connections between their course work (Appendix D in the Supplemental Material), but nine students converged on a coherent, causal relationship (i.e., structure determines properties, which determine function; Appendix F in the Supplemental Material). This is particularly notable given the difficulty these same students had describing connections between B1 and GC1/GC2 regarding energy ( Kohn et al ., 2018 ).…”

Leveraging understanding of energy from physics to overcome unproductive intuitions in chemistry

“…The NGSS emphasize the development of a coherent understanding of energy changes across different scales and disciplinary contexts, treating all energy as either energy of motion (kinetic energy) or energy stored in fields (potential energy). Researchers in the fields of physics and chemistry education research have similarly expressed a need for interdisciplinary collaboration in the investigation of student understanding of energy as well as in the development of curricula to support student learning [11][12][13].…”