scholarly journals Community College Instructors’ Perceptions of Constraints and Affordances Related to Teaching Quantitative Biology Skills and Concepts

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. ar64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa A. Corwin ◽  
Stacey Kiser ◽  
Sondra M. LoRe ◽  
Jillian M. Miller ◽  
Melissa L. Aikens
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Biology ◽  
College Level ◽  
Pedagogical Content ◽  
Biology Students ◽  
Quantitative Skills ◽  
New Material ◽  
Open Coding ◽  
Teacher Professional ◽  
Teacher Professional Knowledge ◽  
Study Participants

Quantitative skills are an important competency for undergraduate biology students and should be incorporated early and frequently in an undergraduate’s career. Community colleges (CCs) are responsible for teaching introductory biology to a large proportion of biology and prehealth students, and quantitative skills are critical for their careers. However, we know little about the challenges and affordances that CC instructors encounter when incorporating quantitative skills into their courses. To explore this, we interviewed CC biology instructors ( n = 20) about incorporating quantitative biology (QB) instruction into their classes. We used a purposeful sampling approach to recruit instructors who were likely to have tried evidence-based pedagogies and were likely aware of the importance of QB instruction. We used open coding to identify themes related to the affordances to and constraints on teaching QB. Overall, our study participants met with challenges typical of incorporating new material or techniques into any college-level class, including perceptions of student deficits, tension between time to teach quantitative skills and cover biology content, and gaps in teacher professional knowledge (e.g., content and pedagogical content knowledge). We analyze these challenges and offer potential solutions and recommendations for professional development to support QB instruction at CCs.

scholarly journals Teaching quantitative biology: goals, assessments, and resources

2014 ◽  
Vol 25 (22) ◽  
pp. 3478-3481 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa L. Aikens ◽  
Erin L. Dolan
Keyword(s):  
Assessment Tools ◽  
Quantitative Biology ◽  
Teaching Resources ◽  
Educational Innovations ◽  
Undergraduate Biology ◽  
Biology Students ◽  
Backward Design ◽  
Quantitative Skills ◽  
Biology Curriculum ◽  
Assessment Strategies

More than a decade has passed since the publication of BIO2010, calling for an increased emphasis on quantitative skills in the undergraduate biology curriculum. In that time, relatively few papers have been published that describe educational innovations in quantitative biology or provide evidence of their effects on students. Using a “backward design” framework, we lay out quantitative skill and attitude goals, assessment strategies, and teaching resources to help biologists teach more quantitatively. Collaborations between quantitative biologists and education researchers are necessary to develop a broader and more appropriate suite of assessment tools, and to provide much-needed evidence on how particular teaching strategies affect biology students' quantitative skill development and attitudes toward quantitative work.

Characterisation of teacher professional knowledge and skill through content representations from tertiary chemistry educators

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 508-519 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Schultz ◽  
G. A. Lawrie ◽  
C. H. Bailey ◽  
B. L. Dargaville
Keyword(s):  
Teaching Strategies ◽  
Teaching Strategy ◽  
Professional Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Bases ◽  
Chemistry Teaching ◽  
Pedagogical Content ◽  
Teaching Community ◽  
Tertiary Teaching ◽  
Teacher Professional ◽  
Teacher Professional Knowledge

An established tool for collating secondary teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (Loughran's CoRe) has been adapted for use by tertiary educators. Chemistry lecturers with a range of levels of experience were invited to participate in workshops through which the tool was piloted, refined and applied. We now present this refined tool for the tertiary teaching community to consider adopting. The teaching approaches of over 80 workshop participants were collected using the tool in a broad survey of tertiary chemistry teaching strategies. Participation in the workshops led to a significant gain in personal PCK for some individuals. Analysis of responses received in the workshops revealed that the consensus model of secondary teacher professional knowledge and skill is also applicable to the tertiary level, and that the CoRe is a useful way to gain insight into the knowledge bases and topic-specific professional knowledge of tertiary chemistry teachers. The data were aggregated and coded inductively to distil the types of strategies commonly found to be useful for teaching particular tertiary chemistry topics. This resulted in collation of over 300 teaching strategies for 19 different chemistry topics, representing significant topic-specific professional knowledge of tertiary practitioners. To share and sustain this collection of teaching strategies, a website was built that is searchable by either chemistry topic or by type of teaching strategy, making it immediately useful to practitioners. Usage analytics data for the website confirm that many users have accessed the resource, showing that this is a practical way to transfer information between chemistry educators.

scholarly journals Online Education as a New Practice of Humanism

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-124
Author(s):  
Svitlana Sylkina
Keyword(s):  
Online Education ◽  
Online Courses ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Educational Practice ◽  
Global Changes ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Teacher Professional ◽  
Pass Through ◽  
Teacher Professional Knowledge ◽  
Contemporary Education

The current stage of the human progress is characterized by the high dynamism and global changes in all aspects of human life. The societies currently pass through a deep process of transformations that requires a new understanding of the human phenomenon and revision of humanism, new social practices, and forms of education. Higher school needs to achieve a very important goal. It is to create contemporary education paradigm, which would be based on shift from one paradigm centered on the University and teacher professional knowledge to a new one, which will be centered on the students and their needs in education. In this article, online education is observed as one of the ways of a new realization of humanism in educational practice. The author also analyzes the humanistic potential of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), its advantages and disadvantages as far as examined the prospects of online education. In conclusion the author mentions that online education due to its main characteristics (openness, accessibility, freedom of choice) is based on human rights and the principles of equality and could be identified as a new practice of humanism.

Investigating high school chemistry teachers’ assessment item generation processes for a solubility lab

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam G. L. Schafer ◽  
Ellen J. Yezierski
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Knowledge Bases ◽  
Chemistry Teacher ◽  
High School Chemistry ◽  
Item Generation ◽  
Chemistry Teachers ◽  
Pedagogical Content ◽  
Assessment Item ◽  
Teacher Professional ◽  
Guidelines And Standards

Designing high school chemistry assessments is a complex and difficult task. Although prior studies about assessment have offered teachers guidelines and standards as support to generate quality assessment items, little is known about how teachers engage these supports or enact their own beliefs into practice while developing assessments. Presented in this paper are the results from analyzing discourse among five high school chemistry teachers during an assessment item generation activity, including assessment items produced throughout the activity. Results include a detailed description of the role of knowledge bases embedded within high school chemistry teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge and the processes used to enact these knowledge bases during planned formative assessment design. Implications for chemistry teacher professional development are posited in light of the findings as well as potential future investigations of high school chemistry teacher generation of assessment items.

Performativity in Practice

2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Dianne Mulcahy
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Identity ◽  
Liberal Education ◽  
Sociology Of Science ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Teaching Standards ◽  
School Teaching ◽  
Teacher Professional ◽  
Teacher Professional Knowledge ◽  
Professional Teaching ◽  
Case Data

In the context of neo-liberal education policy reform, professional teaching standards have become one of the main means of managing improvements to school teaching and assuring its quality. Using the methodology of material semiotics in association with video case data of classroom teaching (in this case, school geography teachers) and their students, the author treats a set of standards in action, towards conducting an ontological inquiry. Bringing the performative perspective of actor-network theory to bear not only is sociality taken into account but also materiality. This paper argues that standards are best understood as shifting assemblies of practice whose nature defines and enacts teacher identity and teacher professional knowledge differently in different locations. The conclusion is drawn that while teaching standards ‘clot’ and can serve to standardise practices of teaching, they are not stable entities. The variable ontology that they manifest challenges the managerialist impulses that tend to drive standards work in education. Altogether, the paper seeks to augment existing accounts of standards within the field of the sociology of science (Bowker & Star, 1999; Star, 2010; Timmermans & Berg, 2003; Timmermans & Epstein, 2010) and contribute to its subfield, the sociology of standards.

scholarly journals Development of a Biological Science Quantitative Reasoning Exam (BioSQuaRE)

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. ar66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liz Stanhope ◽  
Laura Ziegler ◽  
Tabassum Haque ◽  
Laura Le ◽  
Marcelo Vinces ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Biological Science ◽  
Quantitative Reasoning ◽  
Postsecondary Institutions ◽  
Assessment Instrument ◽  
Biological Research ◽  
Undergraduate Biology ◽  
Biology Students ◽  
Quantitative Skills ◽  
Using Data

Multiple reports highlight the increasingly quantitative nature of biological research and the need to innovate means to ensure that students acquire quantitative skills. We present a tool to support such innovation. The Biological Science Quantitative Reasoning Exam (BioSQuaRE) is an assessment instrument designed to measure the quantitative skills of undergraduate students within a biological context. The instrument was developed by an interdisciplinary team of educators and aligns with skills included in national reports such as BIO2010, Scientific Foundations for Future Physicians, and Vision and Change. Undergraduate biology educators also confirmed the importance of items included in the instrument. The current version of the BioSQuaRE was developed through an iterative process using data from students at 12 postsecondary institutions. A psychometric analysis of these data provides multiple lines of evidence for the validity of inferences made using the instrument. Our results suggest that the BioSQuaRE will prove useful to faculty and departments interested in helping students acquire the quantitative competencies they need to successfully pursue biology, and useful to biology students by communicating the importance of quantitative skills. We invite educators to use the BioSQuaRE at their own institutions.

Teaching Students How to Study Mathematics: A Classroom Approach

1986 ◽  
Vol 79 (6) ◽  
pp. 410-413
Author(s):  
Marcia Birken
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Junior High School ◽  
Junior High ◽  
Senior High School ◽  
College Level ◽  
Mathematics Textbook ◽  
Know How ◽  
New Material

For a variety of reasons, students do not know how to study mathematics. In the college-level mathematics classes that I teach, even the A students rarely have a system for attacking large amounts of new material. When asked how they've studied mathematics, most students reply that they do all the assigned homework. The “doing” of the problem is viewed as sufficient for learning. This haphazard approach may lead to success or at least to passing the course in junior and senior high school, where the material is presented in manageable chunks. In college the pace of most courses, whether mainstream or remedial, is such that many students flounder without a method for synthesizing the material. Additionally, since the textbook is opened only to reach the homework problems, students are unlikely to consider a mathematics textbook as a resource. The topic of this article is teaching students, from junior high school through college, strategies for studying mathematics.

scholarly journals TECHONOLOGICAL PEDAGOGICAL CONTENT KNOWLEDGE (TPACK) DALAM RANGKA PENINGKATAN KUALITAS PEMBELAJARAN MAHASISWA PPG SD PRAJABATAN

EDUTECH ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tatat Hartati
Keyword(s):  
Elementary School ◽  
Pedagogical Content Knowledge ◽  
Content Knowledge ◽  
Pedagogical Content ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Teacher Professional ◽  
High Level ◽  
Path Modification ◽  
Technology Pedagogical Content Knowledge

The quality of learning carried out by an educator has not yet received serious attention. This has an impact on the low quality of graduates produced. The core research aims to develop and implement Technology Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) for participants of the Prajabatan Elementary Teacher Professional Program (PPG). The method used is a combined qualitative and quantitative approach with the R & D method with a 4 D path modification, namely define, design, develop, and disseminate. The subjects in this study were 42 students of Prajabatan Elementary School PPG students who were divided into control and experimental classes. 21 students each. The results of this study are in the form of a literacy and high-level TPACK-based TPACK model and the results of the pretest and posttest scores with a significance value of 0.001 which can be concluded that the TPACK-based literacy model and high-level thinking abilities influence the learning quality of Prajabatan Elementary School students.Kualitas pembelajaran yang dilaksanakan seorang pendidik hingga saat ini belum mendapatkan perhatian yang serius. Hal ini berdampak pada rendahnya kualitas lulusan yang dihasilkan. Penelitian inti bertujuan untuk menyusun dan menerapkan Technology Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) bagi peserta Program Profesi Guru (PPG) SD Prajabatan. Metode yang digunakan adalah pendekatan gabungan kualitatif dan kuantitatif dengan metode R & D dengan modifikasi alur 4 D, yakni define, design, develop, dan  disseminate  Subjek pada penelitian ini adalah mahasiswa PPG SD Prajabatan yang berjumlah 42 mahasiswa yang terbagi ke dalam kelas kontrol dan eksperimen yang masing-masing berjumlah 21 mahasiswa. Hasil dari penelitian ini adalah berupa model TPACK berbasis literasi dan kemampuan berpikir tingkat tinggi serta hasil perolehan nilai pretest dan postes dengan nilai signifikansi 0.001 yang dapat disimpulkan bahwa model TPACK berbasis literasi dan kemampuan berpikir tingkat tinggi berpengaruh terhadap kualitas pembelajaran mahasiswa PPG SD Prajabatan.

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