Department of Biological Sciences, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58108.
Biology Department, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO 63103.
CBE Life Sci Educ. 2022 Jun;21(2):es3. doi: 10.1187/cbe.21-05-0118.
As biological science rapidly generates new knowledge and novel approaches to address increasingly complex and integrative questions, biology educators face the challenge of teaching the next generation of biologists and citizens the skills and knowledge to enable them to keep pace with a dynamic field. Fundamentally, biology is the science of living systems. Not surprisingly, systems is a theme that pervades national reports on biology education reform. In this essay, we present systems as a unifying paradigm that provides a conceptual framework for all of biology and a way of thinking that connects and integrates concepts with practices. To translate the systems paradigm into concrete outcomes to support instruction and assessment in the classroom, we introduce the biology systems-thinking (BST) framework, which describes four levels of systems-thinking skills: 1) describing a system's structure and organization, 2) reasoning about relationships within the system, 3) reasoning about the system as a whole, and 4) analyzing how a system interacts with other systems. We conclude with a series of questions aimed at furthering conversations among biologists, biology education researchers, and biology instructors in the hopes of building support for the systems paradigm.
随着生物科学迅速产生新知识和新方法来应对日益复杂和综合的问题，生物学教育者面临着向新一代生物学家和公民传授技能和知识的挑战，以使他们能够跟上动态领域的步伐。从根本上说，生物学是研究生命系统的科学。毫不奇怪，系统是生物学教育改革国家报告中贯穿的主题。在本文中，我们将系统呈现为一个统一的范例，为生物学提供了一个概念框架，以及一种将概念与实践联系起来并整合的思维方式。为了将系统范例转化为具体成果，以支持课堂教学和评估，我们引入了生物学系统思维 (BST) 框架，该框架描述了系统思维技能的四个层次：1）描述系统的结构和组织，2）推理系统内的关系，3）推理系统作为一个整体，以及 4）分析系统如何与其他系统相互作用。最后，我们提出了一系列问题，旨在促进生物学家、生物学教育研究人员和生物学教师之间的对话，希望为系统范例建立支持。
