Leveraging Student Misconceptions to Improve Teaching of Biochemistry & Cell Biology

Abstract

Students come to science class with many ideas of how the natural world works, some of which do not match the consensus of the scientific community and can lead to misunderstandings. Because a growing body of educational research indicates that these misconceptions can serve as resources for learning, we developed a four-point plan to leverage knowledge of common misconceptions to improve classroom teaching by refining instructional focus, providing opportunities for reflective practice, applying evidence-based practices, and promoting exploration of learning theories. By sharing this plan with our teaching colleagues, we were able to foster a collaborative approach to our and others’ practice. To do this, we compiled a resource bank of common student misconceptions using data collected from the University of Toronto’s National Biology Competition, developed a guide for using this misconception resource bank to promote best teaching practices, then shared this plan with our teaching colleagues in order to foster a collaborative approach to our pedagogy. In this article, we present the resource bank and guide and provide teaching tips that can be applied to a wide array of scientific course types and educational levels.

Effectiveness of animation-based instruction on university students’ achievement in cell biology

“…Cell biology is a growing discipline whose boundaries are becoming more blurred due to the explosion of scientific knowledge. One of the learning difficulties of this discipline is linked to the many concepts and processes that are related to many levels of integration of the complexity between the molecular and subcellular levels up to the level of the cell (Akif Haşiloğlu & Eminoğlu, 2017;Fuchs et al, 2021). As a result, the teaching of cell biology is not adapted to the reductionist approach which consists in explaining the structures and functioning of each level of integration in an isolated way.…”

“…In addition, the teaching of cell biology constitutes the basis of subsequent teaching in the other disciplines of biology, such as animal biology, plant biology, physiology, genetics, immunology etc. Furthermore, several studies have identified several difficulties in learning the basic concepts of cell biology among students (Akif Haşiloğlu & Eminoğlu, 2017;Fuchs et al, 2021;Hala et al, 2018;Suwono et al, 2021).…”

“…One of the specificities of teaching cell biology consists in highlighting, simultaneously, the microscopic aspect of the different constituents of the cell, the dynamicity of their interactions and the molecular aspect (Akif Haşiloğlu & Eminoğlu, 2017;Fuchs et al, 2021).…”

“…For the collection of data relating to the evaluation of the achievements of the students in cell biology, an achievement test was used to measure students' conceptual understanding of cell biology. For this, we used two multiple-choice questionnaires which were developed using student's misconceptions identified in the literature (Akif Haşiloğlu & Eminoğlu, 2017;Fuchs et al, 2021;Loertscher et al, 2014;Suwono et al, 2021) and based on the content of the curriculum of cell biology at university in Morocco. Each of the 2 questionnaires includes 25 items that were grouped into 5 topics (Table 1).…”

Funções Epistêmicas De Modelos No Processo De Ensino E Aprendizagem Em Citogenética: Uma Análise No Contexto Da Formação Inicial De Professores De Biologia

“…Os estudos sobre o tema se inserem na pesquisa sobre o ensino de biologia celular, que tem avançado a partir de algumas tendências predominantes: a análise de conhecimentos dos estudantes (por exemplo, Duda & Adpriyadi, 2020;Fuchs, Bonney, & Arsenaut, 2021;Suwono, Saefi, & Susilo, 2019) as dificuldades enfrentadas pelos estudantes na aprendizagem dos conteúdos (Fernández & Tejada, 2019;Gonzalez-Weil & Harms, 2012;Vlaardingerbroek, Taylor, & Bale, 2013) e as alternativas metodológicas para o ensino (Felipe, Gallarreta, & Graciela, 2005;Oliveira & Galembeck, 2016;Puig et al, 2017).…”