Scientists are not sure of how corn was created. There were two competing genetic theories about how corn came to be. One theory maintains that corn had been teased out of a wheatlike grass called teosinte (genus Zea), and the other contends that one now-extinct ancestor of corn had crossed with another grass, "Tripsacum," several millennia ago.…

This article presents a lesson in which students examine current field research on global change. In particular, students investigate the effect of carbon dioxide and tropospheric ozone on ecosystems by applying their knowledge of scientific inquiry and photosynthesis. The goal of the activity is for students to think like ecologists and draw…

Invasive species, commonly known as "invasives," are nonnative plants, animals, and microbes that completely take over and change an established ecosystem. The consequences of invasives' spread are significant. In fact, many of the species that appear on the Endangered Species list are threatened by invasives. Therefore, the topic of invasive…

In this article, the authors describe a large-scale research collaboration, the Partnership for Research and Education in Plants (PREP), which has capitalized on publicly available databases that contain massive amounts of biological information; stock centers that house and distribute inexpensive organisms with different genotypes; and the…

Describes the diversity of flowers with regard to the flower paintings of Pierre-Joseph Redoute, books about flowers, and research in genetic studies. Discusses gardening flowers and flowering strategies and criticizes the fact that biology education has moved steadily away from plants. (KHR)

The purpose of this study was to investigate seventh grade students' conceptions of global warming and climate change. The study was descriptive in nature and involved the collection of qualitative data from 91 seventh grade students from three different schools in the Midwest, USA. An open response and draw and explain assessment instrument was…

College students in natural resources continue to encounter instructor-centered teaching, despite strong evidence that suggests active-learning experiences benefit students more than passive learning activities. Case studies provide an active-learning alternative to lectures by teaching students new content and challenging them to engage in…

Citizen science programs are emerging as an efficient way to increase data collection and help monitor invasive species. Effective invasive species monitoring requires rigid data quality assurances if expensive control efforts are to be guided by volunteer data. To achieve data quality, effective online training is needed to improve field skills…

In elementary and secondary classrooms, educators use plants for various reasons. Plants are often used during learning activities and science experiments. Also, educators frequently decorate their classrooms with plants to make the room more inviting and comfortable. Few new educators have been informed of the potential hazards of commonly known…

Plants and insects share a long evolutionary history characterized by relationships that affect individual, population, and community dynamics. Plant-herbivore interactions are a prominent feature of this evolutionary history; it is by plant-herbivore interactions that energy is transferred from primary producers to the rest of the food web. Not…

Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) is rightly credited as being the "father of modern genetics." He presented the results of his pea experiments at a meeting of his local natural history society in two lectures during 1865. His paper was published in the proceedings of the society the next year. From his breeding experiments with the edible pea, he…

Children's trade books about science may be playing an increasing role in science instruction; however, the potential effects on student learning are unknown. To investigate whether a subset of books would be appropriate for classroom instruction about a specific science topic (plant reproduction), a selection of children's books about plants was…

For several years, the author's fifth-grade students raised and observed plants, kept journals, and analyzed the functions of the parts of a plant. But this year, a near disaster taught her a lesson and increased the value of the activity for her students. Not only did students learn about plants, they now understand what a variable is and how…

Within the framework of variation theory, 7- to 12-year-old students' ways of understanding cellular respiration and photosynthesis were investigated against the background of their teachers' teaching. Eighteen students were selected by the teachers and interviewed by the researcher. Lessons were observed and video recorded, and stimulated-recall…

This article reports on educational design research concerning a learning and teaching strategy for cell biology in upper-secondary education introducing "systems modelling" as a key competence. The strategy consists of four modelling phases in which students subsequently develop models of free-living cells, a general two-dimensional model of…