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TEACHING ISSUES AND EXPERIMENTS IN ECOLOGY
SCIENTIFIC TEACHING OVERVIEW

SCIENTIFIC TEACHING

The purpose of this section is to show you how to do research on your teaching based on theories of learning. Educators call this “action research” because you can modify your course based on data you collect. Doing research on your teaching is a lot like doing ecological research — you ask questions, get data, and use the data to rethink your questions.

The research can be very simple and not take a lot of time. The important point is that you ask questions you are really curious about and use a method that works reasonably well to get at the question. Faculty find that action research is very stimulating and invigorates sometimes tedious teaching.

We have selected three aspects of cognitive research on learning especially applicable to college science teaching. Below are excerpts from a Frontiers article called Research On Learning: Potential for Improving College Ecology Teaching (D’Avanzo 2003; PDF). In each TIEE Frontiers Issues to Teach Ecology, at least one of these areas is the basis of suggestions for action research in ecology courses.

  1. MISCONCEPTIONS: Addressing students' misconceptions (also called alternative or naïve conceptions) is a related and important area of research science education. Hundreds of studies show that students tenaciously hold onto erroneous, often predictable ideas that interfere with their ability to correctly learn new concepts. Constructivism forms the basis for research on misconceptions. Because constructivists believe that knowledge acquisition requires students to mentally restructure their own learning, they expect that students' understanding is often different from what is taught.

    Common misconceptions in ecology include students' understandings of photosynthesis, energy, food webs, evolution, and living versus nonliving things. There are numerous ways that teachers can reveal and then allow students to confront misconceptions. For instance, concept mapping — a method in which learners draw cause-and-effect diagrams — exposes college students' misunderstandings of ecological phenomena (Okebukola 1990). Another avenue more useful in large classes is via students' response to multiple-choice questions specifically designed to illicit common misperceptions (e.g., Dufresne et al. 1992, Wenk 1997).

  2. METACOGNITION is a mental skill which students use to monitor their understanding. Metacognition is ‘knowing what we know and what we don’t know’ and therefore relies on self-teaching and other student-centered learning skills (Flavell 1979). To illustrate, Schoenfeld teaches metacognitive skills with a group method that helps math students be more aware of their thinking processes (Schoenfeld and Herrmann 1982). As students work in small groups on problems, they are required to verbally address three questions: 1) What exactly are you doing? (Can you describe it precisely?), 2) Why are you doing it? (How does it fit into the solution?), and 3) How does it help you? (What will you do with the outcome once you get it?). For further practice, Schoenfeld returns to these questions frequently during lectures. There is evidence that this instruction can improve learning. Compared to controls, Schoenfeld's students give more expert-like solutions to math problems (ibid). King (1992) also concluded that college students who were taught self-questioning strategies were better learners who retained information on exams longer than controls.

  3. ADULT DEVELOPMENTAL STAGE THEORIES: Doing science depends on mature habits of mind — such as questioning assumptions and not taking information at face value. A student with a developed epistemology in science (epistemology is the nature of knowledge) knows how to evaluate controversies and about the existence of uncertainty. Various adult developmental stage theories describe advances in epistemology with maturity and the degree to which people turn to external authorities for “right answers” to complex questions.

    William Perry is well known for his work on young adult development based on his studies of Harvard students (1970). He was especially interested in the interaction between personal agency (degree of reliance on outside authority) and epistemology. According to Perry, students pass through stages of dualism (e.g., there are right and wrong answers), multiplicity (one answer is a good as another), to relativism (different opinions or outcomes may result from factors such as different assumptions or judgments). In regard to agency, students in the black-and-white dualistic stage believe that external authorities can tell them the right answers to questions. In contrast, more mature students trust their own ability to make decisions. The students Perry studied tended to be dualistic thinkers when they entered college and only reached the most mature stages after graduation. Piaget’s influence on Perry’s work includes recognition that learning and development follows a linear sequence and that learning is stage-driven.

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