Ecology education in the post-secondary setting: Opportunities abound for integration and transference

Background/Question/Methods

The complex interrelationships between organisms and their environment offer students a prime opportunity to relate context knowledge in and among disciplines.  However, the over-compartmentalization of college content within and among disciplines has made the nature of teaching courses in post-secondary ecology extremely challenging.  As students grapple with complex interactions between multiple systems, inter-disciplinary thinking is required for a deeper understanding of the material.  At Upper Iowa University, inter-disciplinary discussions have begun about the incorporation of science literacy into existing courses. In selected ecology courses (2010-2011), students were explicitly encouraged to transfer more contextual knowledge between disciplines and to demonstrate the habits of mind of a scientifically literate individual. To do so, several laboratory sections were taught in a way which encouraged and supported students to work toward developing scientific thinking.  The labs allowed students, in a small group, to investigate several ecological topics for an extended period of time throughout the course.  As an instructor, I worked as either a delegator or facilitator with the students as they worked their way through independent and group investigations.

Results/Conclusions

Students in these classes seemed to benefit from the delegator and facilitator mode of instruction and interdisciplinary discussions as they strove to become more scientifically literate.  Initial projects conducted at the beginning of the course had little integration between disciplines. By the end of the course, students were able to:  demonstrate integration of contextual knowledge within several disciplines, think more critically about the interaction of biological systems with the environment, and to explain how being scientifically literate has value to them.