This study examined a network of concepts used in the curriculum, textbooks, instruction, and assessment in relation to somatic cell division and investigated the alignment of science concepts used in them. Textbooks and teachers' instruction and evaluation questions were collected to analyse the alignment between the concepts and the conceptual…

The purpose of this exploratory study was to investigate Brazilian school teacher attitudes and approaches to biodiversity education. We aim to specifically compare the amount of native biodiversity topics as measured by teachers' reports of their teaching emphasis. The study involved 147 teachers from all geographic regions of the country, who…

Feedback loop reasoning is an essential part of systems thinking, which includes the analysis and description of system behaviour and regulative measures. In feedback loops, every change can simultaneously represent a cause and an effect. Research on reasoning in feedback loops is limited to investigating students' existing mental models. This…

While Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education is essential in the high school curriculum, it often carries a reputation of being formidable and overwhelming. The resulting unease students often face inhibits their ability to learn effectively; thus it can be beneficial to integrate a more familiar approach to teach them…

Even though the concept of species is central in biology, the history of species concept and the existence of different species concepts are rarely discussed in biology classroom. This is unfortunate, as teachers could use the plurality of species concepts to enrich discussion in the classroom. Therefore, knowing the students' perception of…

Enzymatic activity is at the core of biological reactions. Understanding them and the chemical and environmental factors that affect reaction rates is critical for biology students. The laboratory experiment proposed here investigated these concepts, while requiring students to document, graph data, analyse results using statistics, and…

Understanding plant reproduction is an important goal in biology education. Unfortunately, various studies show that students have difficulties in connecting the stages of plant reproduction. Students' conceptions of the processes of sexual reproduction (e.g. pollination and seed dispersal) remain unclear, although these conceptions appear crucial…

Constructing scientific explanations of natural phenomena is an important aim of science education. Explanation oriented science teaching approaches encourage learners to engage in sense-making discussions and construct the causal accounts of the phenomena under study. This article demonstrates a lesson-design model that guides biology teachers on…

The present work aimed to investigate the contribution of the board game 'Synthesizing Proteins' to the understanding of protein synthesis by high school students, based on the socio-interactionist theory of Vygotsky. Fifteen students (six from a public school and nine from a private school) participated in the research, which had three stages:…

Institutions of Higher Education have grappled with the predicament of first-year success and epistemological access for years. Recently, a study employed Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) to elucidate why students who performed relatively well in high school biology struggled with the subject in first-year. This study shed valuable light on this…

Antibiotic resistance is typically used to justify education about evolution, as evolutionary reasoning improves our understanding of causes of resistance and possible countermeasures. It has also been promoted as a useful context for teaching natural selection, because its potency as a selection factor, in combination with the very short…

The rapid advancements in science and technology have necessitated the adaptation of biology education to enhance students' understanding and critical thinking skills, aligning with the demands of the 21st century. The development of digital modules based on the Science, Environment, Technology, and Society (SETS) framework represents an…

Critical and creative thinking abilities are part of 21st century skills that have not been well utilized. One effort to improve these abilities can be through project-based learning (PjBL). This quantitative study aims to determine the effect of the PjBL model on students' critical thinking and creative thinking abilities on the ecosystem…

This study considers how students change their coherent conceptual understanding of natural selection through a hands-on simulation. The results show that most students change their understanding. In addition, some students also underwent a transformative experience and used their new knowledge in a leisure time activity. These transformative…

The aim of this study was to design and evaluate an inquiry- and activity-based learning unit for the classroom that uses biological collections to teach key evolutionary concepts and to support the understanding and appreciation of the work of a museum. The unit consisted of three parts that focused on the most important tasks of museums:…