The Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL) created this document in response to an increased amount of requests for effective career development strategies that target the entry and mid-level workforce. These requests came from a number of different industry sectors throughout the country. This paper summarizes all of those requests,…

Life sciences became Biology, a formal scientific discipline, at the turn of the nineteenth century, when it adopted the methods of reductive physics and chemistry. Mendel's hypothesis of inheritance of discrete factors further introduced a quantitative reductionist dimension into biology. In 1910 Johannsen differentiated between the…

Science content knowledge is a concern for educators in the United States because performance has stagnated for the past decade. Investigators designed this study to determine the current levels of scientific literacy among undergraduate students in a freshman-level biology course (a core requirement for majors and nonmajors), identify factors…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) measures student science achievement nationally, state by state, and, most recently, across selected urban school districts. Periodically, the framework underlying the science assessment is revised or updated. This document, "Science Framework for the 2019 National Assessment of…

Students often have misconceptions about natural selection as they misuse a direct causal schema to explain the process. Natural selection is in fact an emergent process where random interactions lead to changes in a population. The misconceptions stem from students' lack of emergent schema for natural selection. In order to help students…

Laboratory-based practical classes are a common feature of life science teaching, during which students learn how to perform experiments and generate/interpret data. Practical classes are typically instructional, concentrating on providing topic- and technique-specific skills, however to produce research-capable graduates it is also important to…

At the State University of New York at Oswego (SUNY Oswego), a faculty member and advisement coordinator, both of the biological sciences department, and the biological sciences librarian have worked together since 2013 to present a workshop called Writing for the Biological Sciences. Offered once per semester, the workshop is sponsored by the…

This research methods Essay details the usefulness of critical theoretical frameworks and critical mixed-methodological approaches for life sciences education research on broadening participation in the life sciences. First, I draw on multidisciplinary research to discuss critical theory and methodologies. Then, I demonstrate the benefits of these…

Despite growing diversity among life sciences professionals, members of historically underrepresented groups (e.g., women) continue to encounter barriers to academic and career advancement, such as subtle messages and stereotypes that signal low value for women, and fewer opportunities for quality mentoring relationships. These barriers reinforce…

Assessment of student learning is fundamental in Higher Education (HE) reflecting academic standards and impacting on student satisfaction, position in league tables and graduate employment. Nonetheless, there is a BME (Black and Minority Ethnic) attainment gap, the difference in the proportion of BME and White students who attain a first class or…

Education research has shown that reflective study can efficiently enhance learning, and the acquisition of knowledge and skills from real-life situations has become a focus of interest for scholars. The knowledge-learning model based on verbal instruction, used in traditional classrooms, does not make use of real-life situations that encourage…

In Life Sciences (biology) education, both nationally and internationally, the study of animal and organ morphology has traditionally involved dissection since the early 19th century. This study focused on the inclinations of teachers and learners towards animal organ dissection, and its use in problem-solving in Grade 11 Life Sciences education…

The central focus of this study is a learning method in which university students produce instructional videos about the content matter as part of their learning process, combined with other learning assignments. The rationale for this is to promote a more multimodal pedagogy, and to provide students opportunities for a more learner-centred,…

In this chapter, we provide an overview of the design, data-collection, and data-analysis efforts for a digital learning and assessment environment for scientific inquiry / science practices called "Inq-ITS" ("I"nquiry "I"ntelligent "T"utoring "S"ystem; www.inqits.org). We first present a brief…

The National Science Foundation's (NSF) decades-long investment in science and engineering (S&E) research helped build the backbone of the U.S. scientific enterprise and transformed universities and colleges into centers of scientific innovation, creativity, knowledge and discovery. It also brought about the benefits of scientific…