Promoting student understanding of biological concepts is a key part of biology education, and the ability to "understand" a concept forms one of the six categories of the oft-used Bloom's Taxonomy. Despite this, there remains no consensus as to what it means to understand a concept. While several formal definitions have been offered, we…

Biology education research often utilizes the terms learning, memorizing, studying, and understanding without providing their specific definition. When definitions have been provided, they are often inconsistent across publications. As part of a larger research study, we interviewed 11 participants on 2 occasions while they were enrolled in a…