This review essay affirms the work Mr. Red does with his students to support their learning about evolution and how his approach agrees with the realities of teaching evolution in the American South. It then shows how focusing on understanding, but not necessarily belief, adds to Mr. Red's apparent neutrality a complimentary pedagogical approach…

Understanding how science is done increases trust in science as it can be seen to be built on reliable data, rational argument and repeated testing. If science is taught as just an assemblage of facts without dealing with the process which gave rise to those facts, then why should pupils trust science more than fables or pseudoscience? Everyone…

In this commentary, Michael Reiss describes his time with the "Journal of Biology Education" ("JBE") dating back to 1984 when the journal published his first article (Reiss 1984). Over the years, Reiss has authored 31 "JBE" pieces (excluding reviews) including one in honor of the journal's 25th anniversary (Reiss…

Charles Darwin supposed that evolution involved a process of gradual change, generated randomly, with the selection and retention over many generations of survival-promoting features. Some theists have never accepted this idea. "Intelligent design" is a relatively recent theory, supposedly based on scientific evidence, which attempts to…

Many aspects of the paper "What if we were in a test tube?: students' gendered meaning making during a biology lesson about the basic facts of the human genitals" intrigue and warrant further exploration. This forum will focus on two particular areas: (1) An expansion of the companion meanings by examining how they resonate with…

As a newcomer, the philosophical basis of systems biology seems intuitive and appealing, the underlying philosophy being that the whole of a living system cannot be completely understood by the study of its individual parts. Yet answers to the questions "What is systems biology?" and "What constitutes a systems biology approach in…

The ever-increasing amount of biological knowledge has resulted in compression of topics in the curriculum to a précis of current understanding. This gives the impression that biology is about a list of things we know. This misconception is extremely damaging, contributing to the idea that science is an impersonal process that generates facts,…

This response to Samuelsson's typology for assessing deliberative democracy in classroom discussions views his analysis through an equity lens. It offers Young's model of communicative democracy as a resource and argues that incorporating that model's emphasis on greeting, rhetoric, and storytelling into the typology can help to promote more…

This response to Jesse Bazzul and Heather Sykes' paper, "The secret identity of a biology textbook: straight and naturally sexed," explores their critiques of textbooks and curricula that authoritatively present scientific accounts of the natural world without engaging students in critical thinking. It proposes that we need to go beyond such…

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…

In this essay I elaborate on three ideas that emerged from reading the work of Sylvie Barma. These points are in response to curriculum reform and the use of activity theory: (a) curriculum reform as a public policy; (b) a reflection about the process followed by teacher implementation of that reform in a biology classroom; and (c) the sense of…

Biology instructors from middle school to university level recognize that natural selection is an essential topic in the curriculum. Numerous studies have shown the prevalence of many alternative conceptions about evolution that persist despite instruction in student populations all over the world. Having valid, reliable and easily used…

As education in England emerges from a major curriculum review (DfE 2013), the next few years will see significant changes in what is taught in schools and how this is assessed. As a core subject, under the current proposals, all students, from the beginning of primary school until age 16, will study science in some detail. Biology is an exciting,…

Reviews of the state of biology fieldwork in UK schools and universities at the beginning of the twenty-first century (Barker, Slingsby, and Tilling 2002; Smith 2004) were not entirely pessimistic; rather they suggested ways forward that might lead to an increase in fieldwork. Whether their hopes have been realised has, perhaps, been revealed by…

This article presents an interview with G. Kip Bollinger. G. Kip Bollinger currently works as a consultant for Intermediate Units, school districts, professional science societies, and science text and kit producers. He performs curriculum alignment, does assessment training, coaches science teachers, trains teachers in the use of specific…