Motivating Tomorrow's Biologists

"How do you make the biology we teach as exciting as the biology that we do?" was the challenging question posed by V. Celeste Carter to participants at the National Academy of Sciences convocation, "Thinking Evolutionarily: Evolution Education across the Life Sciences," held in October. Carter, program director at the National Science Foundation, and others at the convocation discussed the converging efforts to improve biology education, to better motivate students, and to integrate evolution across learning experiences. Simply regurgitating the biological knowledge generated by the scientific community or conducting "cookbook" laboratory experiments does not result in genuine understanding or excitement on the part of students, Carter and other speakers stressed. Instead, the nature and process of science, the unifying concepts and connections to the real world, and the problems encountered and discoveries made by scientists are what make biology come alive. The story of biology is far more complex and fascinating than straightforward facts or neatly labeled diagrams of structures and systems. Although exams can motivate students, the key to using these extrinsic motivators to increase student understanding lies in the way the assessments are designed and what they measure. Those involved in developing the new Advanced Placement Biology exam told convocation participants that the exam will include a greater number of higher-order-thinking questions and will ask students t...
Source: Eye on Education - Category: Biology Authors: Source Type: news