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Mixed Student Ideas about Mechanisms of Human Weight Loss

Recent calls for college biology education reform have identified “pathways and transformations of matter and energy” as a big idea in biology crucial for students to learn. Previous work has been conducted on how college students think about such matter-transforming processes; however, little resea...

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Autores principales: Sripathi, Kamali N., Moscarella, Rosa A., Yoho, Rachel, You, Hye Sun, Urban-Lurain, Mark, Merrill, John, Haudek, Kevin
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: American Society for Cell Biology 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6755313/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31418653
http://dx.doi.org/10.1187/cbe.18-11-0227
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author Sripathi, Kamali N.
Moscarella, Rosa A.
Yoho, Rachel
You, Hye Sun
Urban-Lurain, Mark
Merrill, John
Haudek, Kevin
author_facet Sripathi, Kamali N.
Moscarella, Rosa A.
Yoho, Rachel
You, Hye Sun
Urban-Lurain, Mark
Merrill, John
Haudek, Kevin
author_sort Sripathi, Kamali N.
collection PubMed
description Recent calls for college biology education reform have identified “pathways and transformations of matter and energy” as a big idea in biology crucial for students to learn. Previous work has been conducted on how college students think about such matter-transforming processes; however, little research has investigated how students connect these ideas. Here, we probe student thinking about matter transformations in the familiar context of human weight loss. Our analysis of 1192 student constructed responses revealed three scientific (which we label “Normative”) and five less scientific (which we label “Developing”) ideas that students use to explain weight loss. Additionally, students combine these ideas in their responses, with an average number of 2.19 ± 1.07 ideas per response, and 74.4% of responses containing two or more ideas. These results highlight the extent to which students hold multiple (both correct and incorrect) ideas about complex biological processes. We described student responses as conforming to either Scientific, Mixed, or Developing descriptive models, which had an average of 1.9 ± 0.6, 3.1 ± 0.9, and 1.7 ± 0.8 ideas per response, respectively. Such heterogeneous student thinking is characteristic of difficulties in both conceptual change and early expertise development and will require careful instructional intervention for lasting learning gains.
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spelling pubmed-67553132019-10-15 Mixed Student Ideas about Mechanisms of Human Weight Loss Sripathi, Kamali N. Moscarella, Rosa A. Yoho, Rachel You, Hye Sun Urban-Lurain, Mark Merrill, John Haudek, Kevin CBE Life Sci Educ Article Recent calls for college biology education reform have identified “pathways and transformations of matter and energy” as a big idea in biology crucial for students to learn. Previous work has been conducted on how college students think about such matter-transforming processes; however, little research has investigated how students connect these ideas. Here, we probe student thinking about matter transformations in the familiar context of human weight loss. Our analysis of 1192 student constructed responses revealed three scientific (which we label “Normative”) and five less scientific (which we label “Developing”) ideas that students use to explain weight loss. Additionally, students combine these ideas in their responses, with an average number of 2.19 ± 1.07 ideas per response, and 74.4% of responses containing two or more ideas. These results highlight the extent to which students hold multiple (both correct and incorrect) ideas about complex biological processes. We described student responses as conforming to either Scientific, Mixed, or Developing descriptive models, which had an average of 1.9 ± 0.6, 3.1 ± 0.9, and 1.7 ± 0.8 ideas per response, respectively. Such heterogeneous student thinking is characteristic of difficulties in both conceptual change and early expertise development and will require careful instructional intervention for lasting learning gains. American Society for Cell Biology 2019 /pmc/articles/PMC6755313/ /pubmed/31418653 http://dx.doi.org/10.1187/cbe.18-11-0227 Text en © 2019 K. N. Sripathi et al. CBE—Life Sciences Education © 2019 The American Society for Cell Biology. “ASCB®” and “The American Society for Cell Biology®” are registered trademarks of The American Society for Cell Biology. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0 This article is distributed by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from the author(s). It is available to the public under an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License.
spellingShingle Article
Sripathi, Kamali N.
Moscarella, Rosa A.
Yoho, Rachel
You, Hye Sun
Urban-Lurain, Mark
Merrill, John
Haudek, Kevin
Mixed Student Ideas about Mechanisms of Human Weight Loss
title Mixed Student Ideas about Mechanisms of Human Weight Loss
title_full Mixed Student Ideas about Mechanisms of Human Weight Loss
title_fullStr Mixed Student Ideas about Mechanisms of Human Weight Loss
title_full_unstemmed Mixed Student Ideas about Mechanisms of Human Weight Loss
title_short Mixed Student Ideas about Mechanisms of Human Weight Loss
title_sort mixed student ideas about mechanisms of human weight loss
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6755313/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31418653
http://dx.doi.org/10.1187/cbe.18-11-0227
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