"Rarely have I been so convinced by the power of a new theoretical underpinning for a pedagogical technique such as the one presented here." — School Science Review – issue 393 🚨 Update: I've moved to a new home! You can read the newest, updated version of this article on my new website here: https://christianmooreanderson.com/difference-maker/

In schools, it is common for students to be tasked with creating lists of variables with peculiar names: independent variable, dependent variable. Teachers often decry the failed efforts in helping students remember which is which. What is the cause of this problem? In my view, the list is the problem. Behind the list is a set of causal relationships the teacher understands and can mentally map. For the student, however, it is just a list of terms that they don't fully unde

They see organisms like cars. If I remove a part from an engine, they think it'll malfunction and stop working. The car itself can't do anything about it. But organisms would act; they'd respond in an attempt to maintain their viability.

This is because a principal end-goal of KS4 is a grade. But in KS3, the principal goal should be an invitation into the reality constructed by a subject's members.

Questioning often leads to confused students who don't participate. To counter this confusion we need to establish, what Tsui calls, common ground (2004). And there is an elegant method that solves this problem.

In this post, I explain how I've taught enzyme kinetics without slides or worksheets to 14-year-olds. This lesson followed another on enzyme structure and function, which you can find here . You can read about the benefits of teaching without PowerPoint here . Enzymes are abstract; invisible entities that appear to do work. As with anything in biology, meaning stems from relating what students learn to how it affects action in our world. This involves relating enzymes to how

When teachers step into the classroom, we never act alone. There is no “I do”. Each of our actions is a response, a small arc, in a continual loop consisting of ourselves, our tools, and our students. 

Problems arise in lessons due to transient information, which occurs when information appears and then disappears (Wong et al. 2012). This is common with the presentation of slide decks. A crucial image is shown but vanishes when the teacher moves to the next slide. This puts pressure on the student to retain all the aspects in mind while connecting them to the information on the next slide.

Not long ago a drive emerged against "fun" lessons. The push was to rid the focus on fun and return it to subject knowledge itself. Soon followed the argument that students had to accept boring lessons. Now I hear ever more reports of widespread boring lessons. Often, it seems, following a script of teacher does, students do. With an ontology of controllability comes the urge to pin systems down like an insect to a cork board. While learning through entertainment didn't wor

Two years ago, we began planning the new IB biology syllabus and I shared my initial perspective. Now that we've completed our first journey through it, it's time for an update. Below, I'll discuss the content load, the overall design and the IAs. 🚨 Update: I've moved to a new home! You can read the newest, updated version of this article on my new website here: https://christianmooreanderson.com/my-opinion-on-the-new-2025-ib-biology-syllabus/

Podcast: Sense-making in Classroom Teaching

The nephron is a tricky concept for many students but it doesn't have to be. In this post, I explain how I've taught it recently, without any slides, to 16-year-olds. You can read about the benefits of teaching without PowerPoint here . 🚨 Update: I've moved to a new home! You can read the newest, updated version of this article on my new website here: https://christianmooreanderson.com/how-i-teach-kidney-ultrafiltration/

Podcast: Knowledge Doesn't Equal Understanding

Including metacontent in your teaching will ensure students learn for the long-term.

Oxygen dissociation curves are difficult for students. I often find that difficulty comes from trying to visualise the mechanism through a graph. In this post, I'll show you how I've built a model of the system with a class, which we cna then translate into a graph. Firstly, I began with two stocks and their flows. I labelled the stocks, situated them in a capillary (note the two red lines) and asked the students what the flows represented. They agreed that the first flows re

Does knowledge = understanding? This simple equation suggests that the extent of a person's understanding is purely equal to the extent...

Teaching about natural selection gives a mechanism for how species change but it doesn't directly address how one species can diverge into two. Speciation, then, needs its own lesson. This post shows you how I've taught it my IB biology (16–18) students. Speciation—what will happen? I didn't just tell students about speciation because meaning can't be transmitted. Instead, I provoked them with a difference; some variation. Below is the drawing I produced to begin the lesson.

The role of individual organisms is vital to understanding ecosystem functions. Often, the organism—and how it goes about its life—is left in the background as students are taught about abstract energy flows and nutrient cycles. Students are familiar with their own role in consuming and the growth of plants. Fungi, however, are typically more elusive. To begin understanding nutrient cycling, students need to explore the lives of fungi themselves and how those lives fit into t

The nervous system is a great topic for exploring who we are and what we can do. It's also great for explaining experience. But to do that, it needs to be given meaning, and that comes through seeing how the nervous system could be different. 🚨 Update: I've moved to a new home! You can read the newest, updated version of this article on my new website here: https://christianmooreanderson.com/how-i-teach-the-nervous-system/

Here's how I taught about enzymes recently with students 14–16 using just diagrams and dialogue . You can read about the benefits of teaching without PowerPoint here . What are enzymes? For students that's a strange word. So, firstly, we'd better have a look. To do so, my favourite animation is one of lactase by biointeractive . Not only is the animation nice, but it's a context that is familiar to students. 🚨 Update: I've moved to a new home! You can read the newest, updat

The lac operon is a classic of genetics and is common in biology curricula. Yet, students can sometimes find it difficult. I want to show you how I've taught it using diagrams and dialogue . You can read about the benefits of teaching without PowerPoint here . I began by discussing the structure of the lac operon. This lesson came after several in which we'd considered the complexity of eukaryotic genomes. This included introns and vast regions of "non-coding" DNA. Yet bacter

If you're teaching Mendelian genetics, monogenic disorders are on the cards. But which ones are good examples? The IB has once again decided on PKU (phenylketonuria). In this post, I'll show you how I teach it to my 16-18 year olds. 🚨 Update: I've moved to a new home! You can read the newest, updated version of this article on my new website here: https://christianmooreanderson.com/how-i-teach-pku-with-a-history-of-eugenics/

The relationship between photosynthesis and respiration—within an individual plant—isn't easy for students. Often I find, they've been bombarded with the respiration equation to have them memorise it, yet still don't fully grasp its meaning . Then photosynthesis comes along and when they're shown that the equation is the reverse of respiration, it's just like you've reversed the word order of a peculiar sentence. The meaning of that reversion isn't clear. A stock and flow di

The peppered moth of industrial England—and the Galapagos finches on Daphne Major during the 1976 drought—are common examples used for teaching natural selection. What unites them is their method: observational work. John Endler's work, however, gives us insight into natural selection through experimental methods. Like the observational work just mentioned, his experiments showed the rapidity of natural selection when pressures change abruptly. Endler also pioneered evolutio

Often, people discuss schools as centres for optimising students' learning and teachers' teaching. However, I want to share a distinction...

The nitrogen cycle is one of my favourite lessons. There's so much to connect to: history and everyday life. But, students need a clear model to understand what's going on, lest it be abstract and meaningless. I'll show you two models. One for 16–18 and one for 14–18. In this post, I describe how I built the model in a lesson with my 16–18 year olds, while the model for 14–18 can be found at the end. 🚨 Update: I've moved to a new home! You can read the newest, updated vers

Recently the idea of "rehearsal" has appeared in UK-based educational blogs. But there appears to be confusion. What's it for? Here are some recent quotes: 🚨 Update: I've moved to a new home! You can read the newest, updated version of this article on my new website here: https://christianmooreanderson.com/whats-the-purpose-of-rehearsal-during-lessons/

Around 2012ish, a new movement rode into the UK (school) educational scene. It came with the banner of "evidence-based", to counter the previous movement. I'm not writing to contend whether the movement was right or wrong, but to offer a perspective of what it may be. My view differs to the major slogans of the movement as it took force. Let this movement be called EduCogSci. It was claimed to be a movement of objective reason, empowering teachers with the science of cogni

To understand p-values, you must discern a critical aspect: how confident you can interpret data. You must see how the relationship between the means and their data spread can vary, and how this affects your confidence in interpretation. This post is about getting students to distinguish the meaning of p-values. I begin by drawing a representation of sampling. This is a key concept, but students are often familiar with it due to the exams they sit. 🚨 Update: I've moved to a

Advising students how to study is complex. Learning is messy, with ups and downs. Sudden insights may punctuate periods of seemingly little change. But when students are working for themselves without our guidance (i.e. at home), they need something simple to follow. Below, I offer a study guide that's worked for my classes and those of colleagues in other subjects. Take a look before I discuss it below. 🚨 Update: I've moved to a new home! You can read the newest, updated ve

How to teach mammalian thermoregulation with a system dynamics model.

How to help students understand osmosis by building a stock and flow diagram with them.

Variation theory isn't a theory of how memories are stored. Nor is it a theory of how learning can be impeded (like cognitive load theory) it doesn't tell you what to avoid doing. Crucially, it isn't just an activity or technique you can sometimes add to a lesson. Instead, it's a theory of how we come to perceive something new. Sometimes, things can be sitting right in front of our eyes, yet we're not aware of them. When students enter our classrooms, our role is to help them

🚨 Update: I've moved to a new home! You can read the newest, updated version of this article on my new website here: https://christianmooreanderson.com/how-i-teach-population-size-controls/

During my training year I had to teach a Year 8 class (12 year-olds) the physics topic of heat. I began with a common question for the...

Summer is ending and the new syllabus is rolling out. I just spent a few months developing my resources for the entire course and I want to share what I've learnt. I'll discuss these things: The new syllabus "roadmap" design The content A resource that covers the content of the entire course (link below). 🚨  Update:  I've moved to a new home! You can read the newest, updated version of this article on my new website here: https://christianmooreanderson.com/my-opinion-on-the-

For years I've toiled with quiz questions in my biology courses (AKA core questions). I've used quiz questions as starter quizzes, to summarise key points of an explanation, as homework, and for cover work. I warned about potential problems of quiz questions in a post back in 2020, linked to Prof. Rob Coe's doubts about quiz questions in the classroom . But I made real efforts to make it work and spent considerable time meditating on the best design for quiz questions ( see m

Reading great books is the only one short cut to improving subject knowledge. Here, I compile a selection that have helped me develop as a teacher and are accessibly-written. It isn't a complete list of my favourites and I'm sure there are many great books I'm yet to read. Great Books Human ecophysiology & evolution On Fertile Ground: A Natural History of Human Reproduction A Story of Us: A New Look at Human Evolution I, Mammal: The Story of What Makes Us Mammals 🚨 Update:

I co-construct meaning with students through diagrams and dialogue, so I don't have any slide decks to share. Learn how to teach this way...

The fundamental insight to the digestive system is how it functions to meet the needs of the whole organism. To address this, we must...

"This outstanding book... deserves to be very widely read. I hope it makes a major contribution to how school biology is taught."  —Dr Michael J. Reiss, Professor of Science Education, University of London 🚨 Update: I've moved to a new home! You can read the newest, updated version of this article on my new website here: https://christianmooreanderson.com/biology-made-real/

After coming across two interesting journal papers I thought they would make excellent case studies for my students. Let me introduce,...

What is the cause of osmosis? Typically, with my students of 14-16 years old (GCSE courses), I don't delve into the mechanism. It's the pattern that matters most at this stage. But as students progress to my IB biology course (16-18 years old) and explanations lean more on molecular details, the mechanism becomes more important. In conjunction with the bigger pattern (i.e. water potential) what should we teach as the mechanistic cause? 🚨 Update: I've moved to a new home! You

What are the most important factors for teacher sustainability? I'm sure there are many: student behaviour, planning time, teaching hours, pay, etc. I'll look at just two factors that, together, provide a rough rule for deciding whether an activity or assignment is sustainable. The two factors are 1) how much these activities develop the student and 2) how much they develop the teacher. Crossing these continua, we get this: 🚨 Update: I've moved to a new home! You can read th

Short answer questions are currently ubiquitous in UK secondary biology education. They work well for providing objectivity. This gives...

The Powerpoint years Creating presentations were great for organising my thinking while I planned, I could include: Exactly the right picture that I wanted, in the order that I thought was best. Questions that I had thought up, and add mark schemes. Again, at the right moment of the lesson. Notes to myself on something to say, or something to watch at the right point. I could develop them over years and not worry about forgetting my thoughts, and sequence or reorder lessons e

This preprint was vastly improved and made into Chapter 5 of my book . This is a brief summary of my new (preprint) paper in which: I...

Glucose homeostasis—What will happen? On the surface we have the learning of the component parts of the human body that function as a...

A thought experiment: Scenario 1: Two pedagogy-passionate colleagues (of the same subject) are being observed by a non-specialist. The...

They say that feedback is not about improving the work, but about improving the learner. Yet, what aspect of the learner? Their knowledge...