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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...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
American Society for Cell Biology
2019
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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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6755313 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | American Society for Cell Biology |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
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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