Towards a new biology in lower-secondary: A proposition

Ideas in this blog post eventually developed into a published framework for teachers in the Journal of Biological Education, found here. If you are interested in reading, message me.

Biology as a field is moving in new directions. New perspectives are shedding light on old problems. The reductionist ideas of the late 20th century, the ideas that suggest everything in biology can be explained by studying the smallest scales, is coming to an end. Systems biology and a more holistic, top-down, and probabilistic view is rising. Will school science parallel the shift?

Lower-secondary (KS3) is equally in flux, shifting from an recent philosophy of quantitative data driven curricula, and a frenzy of rapid observable progress. In such contexts of measurable-learning-madness biology is in constant danger of being reduced down to components, their names and functions. Yet, as the field of biology has begun to realise the short comings of reductionism (how much can be said or predicted of an organism by reading its DNA sequence?), it is time for KS3 biology teachers to reflect on our path, on our curricula, on our goals?
 
 Yet, there is more to this complex context. Schools in the UK have also begun a shift away from the curricula that extolled the skills-in-a-vacuum towards a knowledge-rich curriculum built by specialists who understand their subjects' demands and intricacies, and beauty. At the same time the distorting culture of quantitative data has also begun to be dismantled. KS3 no longer has fine-grained descriptors of progress, nor a terminal exam that ends lower-secondary science education.

Biology has almost been liberated. We have a National Curriculum to aid us, but it goes no further than to list content to be covered. We decide the sequence, the emphasis, the time allocation. We can now decide what progress looks like in our tailor-made curriculum, no longer are the goals to categorise students via standarised exams.

Alas, we are hungover from the data-rave. The knowledge-curriculum, designed by passionate specialists is a clear move in the right direction, but the void of KS3 cannot and should not be filled with content knowledge alone, but also needs philosophy. What should our emphasis be in lower-secondary biology?

It seems that the data-hangover of KS3 has influenced many to look to upper-secondary, GCSE exams for their help in understanding what should be covered in lower-secondary. Of course, the data-driven-party is still raving in upper-secondary where exam grades continue to be high-stakes for both teachers and institutions. Under such conditions who would blame anyone for shifting the biological knowledge of content-overloaded exam syllabi into the preparatory years of lower secondary?

Equally, the system was powerful enough, and lasted long enough, that GCSE biology content and exam-board sequencing seems almost like that is biology, and it is hard to think of anything else that could be covered. There is currently a call for rigour in our schools as we shake off the memories of working only on transferable skills. What is more rigorous than teaching harder, more abstract knowledge?

But here philosophy is not the driver of curricular design, but knowledge alone. It is also an idea that conceptual change is achieved simply by teaching the right answer, as if misconceptions come in containers that can be emptied and filled with the dexterity of a good teacher.

Yet, conceptual change is more of an emergent property (Brown, 2014). One that is built overtime through practice and thought. Thus, instead of thinking what knowledge must be accrued, we should think about the threshold concepts (Meyer & Land, 2006) we wish students to overcome, and what contexts and knowledge are best suited to that goal.

Lower-secondary biology is our chance to free ourselves of the tyranny of technically-worded mark schemes of minutia. It is a chance to take back our subject from the exam boards. It is a chance for passionate biologists to think without limits. Where do we want our students to be in three years? For me, the answer is about developing a biologist's gaze, and therefore to help students make sense and meaning of the natural world around them, and in them.

It is to enable students to see nature through a new lens, from a different perspective, to see it like we would. It is to gaze over a forest and see the interdependence, to imagine the flow of energy and matter, information, to visualise the history of adaptation and ponder on its future. It is to zoom in and out of the scales of organisation at will. It is to see the organism and the environment as one, but also separately. It is to see life as a process, not a collection of entities. It is a philosophy, not just a list of content.

This all may sound quite airy fairy, as maybe a few of my posts do. How about some pragmatism? The problem we face here is that each of us are equally biology specialists and equally distinct. We come from varying degree specialisms and disparate interests. Some of us are botanists, others zoologists, microbiologists, ecologists. We all have our own experiences to draw upon to add meaning to the narrative. And so I advocate the personalisation of curricular design.

But hold on, this is not the end. Of course there are also sensible approaches to sequencing content that apply to all. There is also a good consensus of what knowledge should be included amongst biologists. From here we have a basis for our ideas, but what I am advocating is a new KS3 biology, a new philosophical viewpoint of biology. At least new compared to what I have experienced in my time as a teacher, and also a student.

It is a move away from reductionism, a shift away from overly descriptive topics, and a new direction towards a holistic biology based on the big ideas and big questions. Let me present some brief ideas and musings.

Why start lower secondary biology with a topic about cells? It is so ingrained in our curricula that it is seldom questioned. Is this a hangover from a reductionist era? We drive straight to the smaller scales as if this will explain everything to the student. Yet, just as reductionism has failed, these cell biology topics lead merely to descriptive knowledge, leaving the student non the wiser.

Learning in biology must be both meaningful to the student and give explanatory power. It must add to an emerging schema of knowledge. But what is meaningful to a young secondary student? Surely not the smaller, abstract scales, but the level of the nature they see, their own bodies and their place in the environment.

All questions in biology, as I see it, are really ecological questions. Evolution itself is an ecological theory occurring at the population level. Yet the physiology of organisms only makes sense when considered in its environment and its environment's history, and so the mechanisms at smaller scales only offer a perspective to help explain what we observe at larger scales.

Where biology has most meaning is where these three processes intersect: Evolutionary history, the processes occurring in the environment, and the physiological processes of the organism. And thus I propose here that it is at this intersection that the focus of lower secondary biology should be placed.

Depending on our gaze, we can bundle the process of the environment and those of the organism into the package of 'systems'. When studying these processes we are learning to explain how something happens. Equally, the history of evolution, allows us to explain why a system is currently as it is. These form the basis of our two big questions about biology.

And so, what could we begin a biology course with? Maybe it is time to change the perspective of biology curricula from horizontal, to vertical. Instead of a topic that concentrates its content at particular scales, maybe each topic should look at phenomena at the organism-environmental level, and then zoom in and out of the scales to offer explanation.

It is a vertical, ecophysiology perspective.

Not only can we cultivate a particular biologist's gaze, but it also enhances learning as an oscillation occurs between scales of abstraction and brings those abstract details into a meaningful context (see Yo-yo teaching: Knippels, 2002, and semantic waves: Maton, 2013).

This means that our first topic could focus on ecosystems, yet still, if one wishes, could include all the nuances of (Year 7 appropriate) cell biology. The topic could begin with the least abstract but explanatory processes of predator-prey relationships, top-down control of herbivores, et cetera, but then later zoom in to the smaller scales to consider how a human predator (in a pleistocene context) can process the food and oxygen he consumes.

The topic of human reproduction, for example, could equally be set in ecological terms, firstly by looking again at population ecology, r/K selection theory, and the different strategies of the vertebrates for reproduction, metamorphosis in insects, all in front of an evolutionary backdrop. From here it is easy to zoom into the smaller scales to consider the mechanisms of human reproduction and the innovations of eutherians.

Other topics seemingly fall into this pattern with ease, especially photosynthesis, plant reproduction, the later topics of the circulatory, respiratory, and digestive systems.

And now where the student once saw entities, now sees mechanisms in an interconnected and dynamic system. The human digestive system is not something that belongs to us as an entity, but is a component of processes that extend beyond the self. The student now easily traces matter through ecosystems, visualises the flow of information, can demarcate scales of organisation and the homeostatic efforts in each, and finally appreciate the wonders of evolutionary innovation in context.

We have been presented with a wonderful opportunity. Freed from the shackles of meaningless data driven regimes, we can create a new biology. Where will we take it? Offloading of content from upper-secondary is just a new type of shackle, and yet, in my view, also impoverishes student understanding of biology. Knowing lots of biological knowledge is not to view nature like a biologist. That knowledge needs to be organised in a meaningful manner. How will we organise it?

If you've enjoyed this—check out my book. Download chapter 1 here—English edition—edición española—or check out my other posts.

@CMooreAnderson (twitter)

Brown, E., 2014. Students’ Conceptions as Dynamically Emergent Structures. Science and Education, (23), pp.1463–1483

Knippels, M.C., 2002. Coping with the Abstract and Complex Nature of Genetics in Biology Education: The Yo-Yo Learning and Teaching Strategy. Ph.D. Thesis, Utrecht University, Utrecht.

Maton, K., 2013. Making semantic waves: A key to cumulative knowledge-building. Linguistics & Education, 24(1), pp.8–23.

Meyer, J., Land, R., 2006. Overcoming barriers to student understanding: threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge, Abingdon: Routledge.