Practitioner research as a means to improve students’ scientific epistemology in an undergraduate introductory biology course

Background/Question/Methods

Evidence-based "scientific" teaching represents a set of new applications of a well-known teacher*researcher paradigm in which faculty apply the scientific method to pose and test hypotheses based on cognitive learning theories about the effects of curriculum and instruction on student learning.  This talk will present my challenges and some successes with using evidence-based "scientific teaching,” also referred to as “practitioner research” (with pre-, mid-, and post-tests), to dislodge and correct student misconceptions about scientific thinking and epistemology.  At Widener University, which is a 4-year private primarily undergraduate institution in metropolitan Philadelphia, PA, where I teach the fall freshman course in Evolutionary Ecology Bio161, I have been using standardized assessment instrumentation for the past 8 years (multiple choice and essay based).  For fall 2006, I made an extensive set of course revisions (both content and pedagogy) in response to results of 2000-2005 assessment data. 

Results/Conclusions

Data from fall 2006-2007 indicate significant improvements in the effectiveness of my teaching (curriculum and instruction) on student learning of core concepts of ecology and evolution.  Evidence also indicates parallel successes at displacing some of my students’ misconceptions regarding their scientific epistemology; however, several misconceptions appear to be tenacious constructs to dislodge.  I enjoin that practitioner research methods are highly effective means to test hypotheses about the effectiveness of course revisions on student learning. This project is part of the “Practitioner Research” initiative of ESA’s Teaching Issues and Experiments in Ecology (TIEE, http://tiee.ecoed.net).