High-School Biology Today and Tomorrow (1989) / Chapter Skim
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Part I: Opening Address and Responses
Part I: Opening Address and Responses
Pages 1-42
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PART I Opening Address and Responses
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If we consider biology a component of scientific literacy, which In turn Is an ingredient of cultural literacy, how do we make our young people literate? Evelyn E
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Enrollment in high school science coumes has fallen. Moreover, science textbooks have been heavily criticized as covering too many topics far too superficially.
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Are there alternative and more sensitive measurements of achievement? ~ what extent do texts and other instructional materials drive the curriculum?
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A 1909 report from the High School Teachers Association of New York supported an emphasis on applied biology and training in living and recommended such topics as conservation, health and nutrition, ecology, and critical thinking about biology as applied to daily life. In 1914, a committee of the Central Association of Science and Mathematics Teachers set out as the purposes of science education "a knowledge of the world of nature in relation to everyday life, and an emphasis on career preparation and choice, on problem solving, and on a consideration of the degree of credibility of scientific knowledge." And in 1915, a committee on natural sciences of the National Education Association stated
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Mayer (1986) points out some of the problems: Despite the resounding triumph of the BSCS effort adoption by over half the nation's school districts, improved student performance, textbook sales in the millions, adaptations by 14 foreign countries the sad truth is that there is resistance and resentment by the publishing community, by much of the professional academic education community, by many teachers who were unprepared to meet the demands of these new curricula, and by other institutional entities to this brave new
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Should the biology curriculum not be seen in that context? Should we not be teaching the biology of survival on the basis of ecology, including human ecology?
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1987. Curriculum Development at the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study.
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However, simply updating the content will not adequately raise the quality of school science or significantly improve America's scientific literacy. Attaining these goals requires attention to the nature of Instruction, as well as the content of the school science curriculum.
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Society's values are one of the factors that influence young people's attitudes toward education and learning science. In a nation that values cars, clothes, and cocaine more than learning, it is not surprising that many of our high-school students spend more time at their part-time jobs than on their homework Beyond the influence of social values on students' attitudes toward education and learning in general, social values exert profound influence on science learning.
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Other psychological factors also influence science learning, but are not limited to specific subcultures. One of these factors relates to a basic human drive to understand the natural environment.
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Personal theories are not the only factor that makes science learning so difficult. A project conducted by Sheila Tibias (1986)
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How, then, can biology be taught in a way that will bring about the desired conceptual change, as well as attending to the other purposes of teaching biology in the high school and college? A necessary condition is that all science teachers at all levels, including college faculty, recognize that students bring personal theories about the natural world to the science classroom.
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In this sense, the intellectual skills become learning-to-learn-science skills. Improving science achievement of America's youth requires developing teaching strategies that will facilitate the evolution of personal theories into a canonical knowledge base while developing the intellectual skills that enable further science learning.
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Hornig, Eds. This Year in School Science 1986: The Science Curriculum.
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And the human population Is almost 10 billion, with a yearly John Harte holds a joint professorship in the Energy and Resources Group and the Department of Plant and Soil Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a senior faculty researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and a senior investigatorat the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory.
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They learn how information is encoded in DNA, but do not comprehend that our food crops are derived from a small number of wild species and that the future sustainability of food production requires the preservation of genetic diversity on the planet. They emerge from high school thinking that genetic engineering is a panacea, that food comes from a supermarket, that human survival is decoupled from the survival of natural ecosystems, and that clean air and water are luxuries that have to be balanced against economic growth.
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It is entirely possible, however, that a top-down approach, stressing at the outset of the course both more natural history and more facts and concepts pertinent to human survival, would motivate students in a way that the traditional curriculum seems unable to do. And it may even mitigate the negative image of scientists that seems to repel students from an interest in the subject.
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I say that with confidence based on my observation that students best retain from their science education the material that they have played creatively with in the courses. So my immodest suggestion is that the pedagogic techniques used in Consider a Spherical Cow be adapted to the high-school science curricula.
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He was general manager, ~ (McGraw-Hill) ; vice president, Science Research Associates (IBM)
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It is you who must set the directions, the objectives, and the content of the biology curriculum. You should come to conclusions quickly, state them clearly, and proclaim them boldly.
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· That a warmer incubator stimulated seed germination. · That genetic engineering was being discussed.
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" Our chair's comments remind us of the dangers of narrowly defining objectives as in the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study experience when developers and publishers worked at odds rather than together. She also reminded us of the importance of parental and societal interest in supporting the value of biology education.
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This is a simple premise-easily understood but it must be articulated, advanced, and promoted. We continually hear that we don't "value" science education as much as other cultures do and we don't.
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26 HIGH-SCHOOL BIOLOGY P.S.: It's not easy. They will suggest and insist on compromise in terms of difficulty level, content load, and consistency of presentation.
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Level 350 Integrates specialized scientific information. Level 250, "Applies basic scientific information," can be defined as the ability to interpret data from simple tables and to make inferences about the outcomes of experimental procedures.
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Is it good enough that 53.4% of our 13-year-olds can apply basic scientific information as described above? That is better than the situation was 10 years ago, when only 49.2% were achieving at this level.
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I try to present, In two 2-hour sessions, the fascinating and changing world of molecular genetics as it applies to human disease. I select several items from newspapers reporting on scientific discoveries and give them to the students, as well as the original scientific articles.
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This year, it will be the linkage of colon cancer with DNA markers on chromosome 5 and the growing evidence linking sequential genetic changes in cells with progression of the malignant phenotype. We are living in a Golden Age of Biology.
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The story of this discovery provides a forum for describing principles, as well as specific examples. HUMAN DISEASES AS EXAMPLES IN BIOLOGY Let me illustrate the goal of achieving a basic understanding of biological principles by going back to my major premise that there are so many exciting discoveries in medicine today that you can use them to illustrate any principle you wish to teach.
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1b determine whether familial polyposis was associated with the abnormality of chromosome 5, both groups used pieces of DNA that were known to be polymorphic and that were mapped to this region of chromosome 5. Then they asked, "Are any of these DNA markers linked to the gene for polyposis in families in which a number of individuals in several generations had colon cancer and from whom DNA was available for analysis?
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Ellen Solomon, an associate of Walter Bodmer, and co-workers (1987) showed by using the same marker probe that the tumor cells in up to 40% of colon cancers had a loss of genes on chromosome 5.
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As I have already indicated, similar types of analyses are in progress covering a wide range of inherited human diseases, both diseases that result from a mutation in a single gene (for example, cystic fibrosis or sickle-cell anemia) and diseases that result from the interaction of several genes (such as coronary arterial disease or stroke)
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Bethesda, Md.: Howard Hughes Medical Institute. National Research Council.
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You may justifiably ask why I am here, having obviously admitted my limitations; to that the answer must be that I have a concern about the teaching of the scientific disciplines, such as biology, in our high-school programs. I am compelled, however, In that concern by the recognition of Hanrey S
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concerning the relatively poor American student achievement in scientific education, compared with that of other developed countries, emphasizing that science instruction has had a low priority; the teachers of science are inadequately trained; there are teacher shortages in certain basic scientific fields, accompanied by a decline in the enrollment of high-school students in science courses and, among other things, the lack even of a consensus as to why science should be taught, what should be taught, and to whom, and thus, how the process can be changed. Perhaps even more troubling than the reference to Armstrong et al.
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, it would be preferable to offer a basic course in biology as a scientific discipline to all whose interest in the field may have been stimulated either by such a basic science course or, if none were available, by reading, by advice from career guidance counselors, or by completion of courses, particularly in basic chemistry or physics. Of course, prior basic knowledge in- physics and chemistry would be highly desirable to ensure a better understanding of the processes and mechanisms prevailing in living organisms.
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Good and sound curricula taught by motivated and adequately trained teachers should open young minds to the opportunities in the biological sciences, and especially to the value of at least basic biology education and to the appreciation of how things around us are affected by disturbances in the balances of life processes (e.g., environmental pollution, disease, and atmospheric change, to name just a few)
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Regardless of the reasons for that decision, whether they are economic or social, let us assume some capacity to learn, absorb, and even apply basic high-school biology training. We have found that with good basic biology education, these youngsters can quickly grasp principles and practice in a typical biochemistry, toxicology, physiology, or even pharmacology research laboratory or biological quality-control or clinical-assay laboratory.
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42 HIGH-SCHOOL BIOLOGY of life processes in health and disease and thus of our capacity to intervene successfully and restore balance. Ib my mind, therefore, it is our obligation to lay solid foundations of basic knowledge, and thus understanding of life processes, in the high-school setting, so that our young citizens may benefit, as fully as their individual capacities permit, from our progress in this field.
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