The study of flower structure is essential in plant identification and in understanding sexual reproduction in plants, pollination syndromes, plant breeding, and fruit structure. Thus, study of flower structure and construction of floral formulae are standard parts of first-year university botany and biology courses. These activities involve…

I use the diary that Darwin wrote during the voyage of HMS Beagle and recent images of a few of the places he visited to illustrate some comparisons between Darwin's world and ours. For today's students, increasingly committed to environmental issues, this may be an especially promising way to introduce Darwin.

The Biodiversity Community Action Project is a stimulating and vigorous project that allows students to gain an in-depth understanding of the interconnection between organisms and their environments as well as the connection of science to their lives and society. It addresses key content standards in the National Science Education Standards and…

The "new biology" of the 21st century is increasingly dependent on mathematics, and preparing high school students to have both strong science and math skills has created major challenges for both disciplines. Researchers and educators in biology and mathematics have been working long hours on a project to create high school teaching modules…

The National Science Education Standards prescribe that an understanding of the importance of classifying organisms be one component of a student's educational experience in the life sciences. The use of a classification scheme to identify organisms is one way of addressing this goal. We describe Conifer ID, a computer application that assists…

Serial dilution is often a difficult concept for students to understand. In this short dry lab exercise, students perform serial dilutions using seed beads. This exercise helps students gain skill at performing dilutions without using reagents, bacterial cultures, or viral cultures, while being able to visualize the process.

First-year university students have misconceptions about the source and dynamics of publicly funded research money. We designed an activity in which students take part in a mock grant panel. The results indicated a strong tendency toward student funding of applied medical research at the expense of basic research. Exposure to a few examples of…

I wrote a rap song to explain the process of photosynthesis to my students.

Clay models have proved to be useful teaching aids for many topics in biology that depend on three-dimensional reasoning. Students studying embryonic development struggle to mentally reconstruct the three-dimensional structure of embryos and larvae by observing prepared slides of cross-sectional slices. Students who build clay models of embryos…

A survey of Florida teachers reveals many differences in comfort level with teaching evolution according to the state's science teaching standards, general attitudes and beliefs about evolution, and the extent to which teachers are criticized, censured, disparaged, or reprehended for their beliefs about the teaching of evolution.

Thomas Kuhn, in "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," posited that science does not progress by the steady accumulation of knowledge, but rather by a system of competition among paradigms. They vie for supremacy through greater parsimony, explanatory power, and popularity among the community of scientists (Kuhn, 1962). The current…

A biology teacher has developed a rare and troubling neurologic disorder. He hears of an experimental treatment that has produced impressive results. The treatment involves surgically ablating selective parts of the brain at close proximity to the brainstem. There is a risk that, during the procedure, vital parts of the brain could be…

Biodiversity has economic value to humans and many suggest that of all groups who should be most interested in the preservation of biodiversity, it should be industries leading the way, as biodiversity has provided, and will continue to provide, many raw materials used by industries around the world. This is especially the case for the…

As described in "How People Learn," "Developing Biological Literacy," and by the Commission on Undergraduate Education in the Biological Sciences during the 1960s and early 1970s, laboratories should promote guided-inquiries or investigations, and not simply consist of cookbook or verification activities. However, the only word that could describe…

Natural selection is the mechanism of evolution caused by the environmental selection of organisms most fit to reproduce, sometimes explained as "survival of the fittest." An example of evolution by natural selection is the development of bacteria that are resistant to antimicrobial agents as a result of exposure to these agents. Triclosan, which…