Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado-Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.
CBE Life Sci Educ. 2013 Jun 1;12(2):153-61. doi: 10.1187/cbe.12-09-0149.
If students are to successfully grapple with authentic, complex biological problems as scientists and citizens, they need practice solving such problems during their undergraduate years. Physics education researchers have investigated student problem solving for the past three decades. Although physics and biology problems differ in structure and content, the instructional purposes align closely: explaining patterns and processes in the natural world and making predictions about physical and biological systems. In this paper, we discuss how research-supported approaches developed by physics education researchers can be adopted by biologists to enhance student problem-solving skills. First, we compare the problems that biology students are typically asked to solve with authentic, complex problems. We then describe the development of research-validated physics curricula emphasizing process skills in problem solving. We show that solving authentic, complex biology problems requires many of the same skills that practicing physicists and biologists use in representing problems, seeking relationships, making predictions, and verifying or checking solutions. We assert that acquiring these skills can help biology students become competent problem solvers. Finally, we propose how biology scholars can apply lessons from physics education in their classrooms and inspire new studies in biology education research.
如果学生要像科学家和公民一样成功地应对真实、复杂的生物问题，他们需要在本科阶段就有练习解决此类问题的机会。过去三十年来，物理学教育研究人员一直在研究学生的问题解决能力。尽管物理问题和生物问题在结构和内容上有所不同，但教学目的非常接近：解释自然界中的模式和过程，并对物理和生物系统进行预测。在本文中，我们讨论了生物学教育者如何采用物理学教育研究人员支持的方法来提高学生的问题解决技能。首先，我们将生物学学生通常需要解决的问题与真实、复杂的问题进行了比较。然后，我们描述了强调解决问题的过程技能的经过研究验证的物理课程的开发。我们表明，解决真实、复杂的生物学问题需要许多与实践物理学家和生物学家在表示问题、寻找关系、做出预测以及验证或检查解决方案时使用的相同技能。我们断言，获得这些技能可以帮助生物学学生成为有能力的问题解决者。最后，我们提出了生物学学者如何在课堂中应用物理学教育的经验教训，并激发生物学教育研究的新研究。
