The "Next Generation Science Standards" identifies argumentation as a central practice, and, subsequently, energizes teachers to develop students' capacity to write well-reasoned arguments and support their claims with relevant evidence. These skills now expected in the science classroom have long been central to instruction in…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of RICOSRE learning models towards critical thinking skills of students with different academic abilities. This quasi-experimental study employed a pretest-posttest nonequivalent control group design and involved all the eleventh-grade students from high schools in Malang, Indonesia. The…

Metacognitive regulation occurs when learners regulate their thinking in order to learn. We asked how introductory and senior-level biology students compare in their use of the metacognitive regulation skill of evaluation, which is the ability to appraise the effectiveness of an individual learning strategy or an overall study plan. We coded…

Reasoning skills have been clearly related to achievement in introductory undergraduate biology, a course with a high failure rate that may contribute to dropout from undergraduate STEM majors. Existing measures are focused on the experimental method, such as generating hypotheses, choosing a research method, how to control variables other than…

The research study sought to determine the effect of tailored animated motion sequences on teaching, performance and visual literacy in Biology learners. The animations were developed as per the Grade 8 Biology syllabus hence referring to the term 'tailored motion graphic's' using the ADDIE design model. This mixed-methods study included a series…

This article reviews the discovery of RNA interference, its mechanism of action and its functions, and the principles, challenges, and strategies for RNA therapeutics.

A look back at some famous discoveries in biology highlights the competitive nature of science, the trophy being priority by publication.

Evolutionary trees are key tools for modern biology and are commonly portrayed in textbooks to promote learning about biological evolution. However, many people have difficulty in understanding what evolutionary trees are meant to portray. In fact, some ideas that current professional biologists depict with evolutionary trees are neither clearly…

Metabolomics is a key discipline in systems biology, together with genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics. In this omics cascade, the metabolome represents the biochemical products that arise from cellular processes and is often regarded as the final response of a biological system to environmental or genetic changes. The overall screening…

Remote camera-traps are commonly used to estimate the abundance, diversity, behavior and habitat use of wildlife in an inexpensive and nonintrusive manner. Because of the increasing use of remote-cameras in wildlife studies, students interested in wildlife biology should be exposed to the use of remote-cameras early in their academic careers.…

This study investigated biology teachers' (N = 148) understanding of models and modelling (MoMo), their model-related teaching activities and relations between the two. A framework which distinguishes five aspects of MoMo in science ("nature of models," "multiple models," "purpose of models," "testing…

In an attempt to better understand the flipped technique and evaluate its purported superiority in terms of student learning gains, the authors conducted an experiment comparing a flipped classroom to a traditional lecture classroom. Although the outcomes were mixed, regarding the superiority of either pedagogical approach, there does seem to be a…

In an effort to make mathematics relevant to biology students, the authors developed two modules that sought to integrate mathematics and ecology instruction to differing degrees. The modules were developed by a team of biology and mathematics educators and were implemented in an ecology course using three different instructional methods for three…

Threshold concepts have been referred to as "jewels in the curriculum": concepts that are key to competency in a discipline but not taught explicitly. In biology, researchers have proposed the idea of threshold concepts that include such topics as variation, randomness, uncertainty, and scale. In this essay, we explore how the notion of…

The first summit of projects funded by the National Science Foundation's Research Coordination Networks for Undergraduate Biology Education (RCN-UBE) program was held January 14-16, 2016, in Washington, DC. Sixty-five scientists and science educators from 38 of the 41 Incubator and Full RCN-UBE awards discussed the value and contributions of RCNs…