Promoting prospective elementary teachers’ learning to use formative assessment for life science Instruction

To support elementary students’ learning of core, standards-based life science concepts highlighted in the Next Generation Science Standards, prospective elementary teachers should develop an understanding of life science concepts and learn to apply their content knowledge in instructional practice to craft elementary science learning environments grounded in students’ thinking. To do so, teachers must learn to use high-leverage instructional practices, such as formative assessment, to engage students in scientific practices and connect instruction to students’ ideas. However, teachers may not understand formative assessment or possess sufficient science content knowledge to effectively engage in related instructional practices. To address these needs, we developed and conducted research within an innovative course for preservice elementary teachers built upon two pillars—life science concepts and formative assessment. An embedded mixed methods study was used to evaluate the effect of the intervention on preservice teachers’ (n = 49) content knowledge and ability to engage in formative assessment practices for science. Findings showed that increased life content knowledge over the semester helped preservice teachers engage more productively in anticipating and evaluating students’ ideas, but not in identifying effective instructional strategies to respond to those ideas

Investigating undergraduate students’ engagement in systems thinking and modeling using causal maps

IntroductionTo develop a foundation of scientific understanding, undergraduate biology students need to integrate ideas about individual concepts into thinking about complex biological systems.MethodsTo investigate the extent to which undergraduate students engage in systems thinking, we conducted a pre-post study with students in a required undergraduate botany course at a small liberal arts college in the Midwest. All students in the study completed a causal map at the beginning and end of the course. Casual maps are similar to concept maps but demonstrate cause and effect relationships rather than other connections included in a concept map.ResultsAnalysis showed that the majority of students did see some connections within the system but did not reach a high level of systems thinking.DiscussionThis work highlights the difficulties undergraduate students have with engaging in systems thinking but provides important insight into the particular areas in which students do engage in more complex thinking and areas in which we can specifically target with instruction and intervention