Society and education are inherently ableist. Disabled people are routinely excluded from education, or have poorer outcomes within educational systems. Improving educational experiences and outcomes for people of color has required educators to design antiracist curricula that explicitly address racial inequality. Here, we explore parallel…

A classic, life science-themed fluid dynamics scenario is blood flow through a constriction. Physics teachers traditionally ask students if the pressure experienced by the blood in the constriction is greater, lesser, or the same as before the constriction. The conventional approach to resolving this question calls upon the equation of continuity,…

Mechanistic reasoning, or reasoning systematically through underlying factors and relationships that give rise to phenomena, is a powerful thinking strategy that allows one to explain and make predictions about phenomena. This article synthesizes and builds on existing frameworks to identify essential characteristics of students' mechanistic…

All living structures, from archaea to human, are open thermodynamic systems analysed through nonequilibrium thermodynamics. Nonequilibrium thermodynamics is a field with important applications to life sciences, which is very often left out of life science courses. A three-step method is suggested to make an easy introduction of nonequilibrium…

This article makes a case for biosocial education as a field of research and as a potential framework for education practice. The article engages with sociology of education's contemporary interests in embodiment and affect, the possibilities offered by concept studies, and uses of assemblage and complexity theory for thinking about educational…

The release of A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas (NRC, 2012) provides the basis for the next generation of science standards. This article first describes that foundation for the life sciences; it then presents a draft standard for natural selection and evolution. Finally, there is a…

Higher education faculty are not held to the same standard of pedagogical preparation as primary and secondary teachers. This perspectives essay points out the difference in pedagogical preparations between higher education faculty and high school teachers. The essay highlights research indicating the importance of pedagogical training, offers…

Biology teachers are accustomed to engaging individuals who do not accept biological evolution. Denial of evolution ranges from ignorance of the evidence to outright denial or distortion of data. The list of science denial topics has grown alarmingly over the years to include: HIV as the cause of AIDS, exaggeration of the health and environmental…

Good quality, timely feedback is a key factor to help students achieve their full potential. Increased class sizes have put significant strain on the ability to return work promptly without compromising feedback quality. In the current study, two screencasting technologies were used to produce audiovisual feedback. For essays, Jing was used,…

Undergraduates commonly harbor alternate conceptions about evolutionary biology; these alternate conceptions often persist, even after intensive instruction, and may influence acceptance of evolution. We interviewed undergraduates to explore their alternate conceptions about macroevolutionary patterns and designed a 2-h lesson plan to present…

The philosophy of biology today is one of the most exciting areas of philosophy. It looks critically across the life sciences, teasing out conceptual issues and difficulties bringing to bear the tools of philosophical analysis to achieve clarification and understanding. This essay surveys work in all of the major directions of research:…

In order to be effective competitors in the marketplace, students must be able to think critically, communicate complex ideas through writing, collaborate with peers, and apply their knowledge of biological science to generate solutions for issues facing society. In this paper we examine the nature of the instructional tools, strategies, and…

The Biology Intensive Orientation for Students (BIOS) Program at Louisiana State University was designed to increase the success of incoming freshman biology majors in the first course in their major. The program combined content lectures and examinations for BIOL 1201-Introductory Biology for Science Majors, the first course in their major, as…

A number of factors affect successful implementation of an integrated science curriculum, including various outputs and inputs related to teacher quality such as professional development experiences, adequate planning periods, and adequate content preparation of teachers with regard to content knowledge associated with the curriculum taught. This…

While Gottlieb recognized the significance of biological factors for behavioral development, the system of psychology he developed did not cast the discipline as a purely biological science. Rather, genes, brains, hormones were understood by him as participating, rather than causal factors in behavioral origins. He worked from two basic principles…