One of the key agendas for the emerging field of disciplinary-based education research is the evaluation of the trajectory of disciplinary knowledge development from novice to expert. However, with the ongoing promotion of student-centered and collaborative undergraduate science classrooms, it is unknown how peer discourse during these exercises…

Informed understandings of nature of science and scientific inquiry are generally accepted goals of biology education. This article points out central features of scientific inquiry with relation to biology and the nature of science in general terms and focuses on the relationship of students' inquiry skills in biology and their beliefs on the…

There is no agreement about the robustness of intuitive representations of the circulatory system and their susceptibility to change by instruction. In this paper, we analyse to what extent students with varying degrees of biology instruction and different ages (High School Health Science and Social Science students and first and final year…

We examined the wildlife knowledge of primary (aged 4-12) schoolchildren. In particular, we examined the effects of children's age and gender, as well as the taxonomy and origin (indigenous versus exotic) of wildlife, on the degree of knowledge about different species. We used illustrated "flashcards" of mammals, birds and arthropods,…