Cole Elijah J, Doherty Jennifer H
Department of Physiology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, United States.
Adv Physiol Educ. 2025 Mar 1;49(1):166-176. doi: 10.1152/advan.00198.2024. Epub 2024 Dec 18.
Research shows that when students use core concepts to guide their reasoning, they are able to construct more accurate, mechanistic explanations. However, there is scant research exploring student's perceptions of the usefulness of core concepts. Knowing students' perceptions could be influential in encouraging faculty to adopt core concept teaching strategies. In this study, we investigated how students perceive the usefulness of using the physiology core concepts to guide their reasoning. We collected the perceptions of undergraduate science majors who had completed Introductory Biology II, which was taught using a subset of physiology core concepts. Eleven student volunteers were interviewed using a semistructured protocol, and 22 students provided end-of-semester reflections. Using a constant comparative method, we identified four emergent themes in students' perceptions: core concepts guide reasoning, core concepts support reasoning and learning across topics and disciplines, core concepts build self-efficacy in reasoning, and drawn core concept tools visualize reasoning. These findings suggest that core concepts, when used as tools to reason with, help students explain rather than memorize physiological phenomena, thus supporting deeper learning and transfer of knowledge to novel contexts. We also found that drawn scaffolding tools play a critical role in helping students organize their thinking, making abstract systems more approachable and supporting mechanistic reasoning. This study is the first qualitative analysis examining students' perceptions of the role core concepts of physiology play in their learning and reasoning processes. We explore how students perceive the benefits of using physiology core concepts in their learning. Students believe core concepts guide and strengthen their reasoning across topics, while improving their confidence in their ability to understand and reason. Our findings provide useful insights for educators on why and how they should integrate the core concepts of physiology into their teaching.
研究表明，当学生使用核心概念来指导他们的推理时，他们能够构建更准确、更具机制性的解释。然而，很少有研究探讨学生对核心概念有用性的看法。了解学生的看法可能会影响教师采用核心概念教学策略。在本研究中，我们调查了学生如何看待使用生理学核心概念来指导他们推理的有用性。我们收集了完成《生物学导论II》课程的本科理科专业学生的看法，该课程使用了一部分生理学核心概念进行教学。使用半结构化方案对11名学生志愿者进行了访谈，22名学生提供了学期末的反思。通过持续比较法，我们在学生的看法中确定了四个新出现的主题：核心概念指导推理、核心概念支持跨主题和学科的推理与学习、核心概念增强推理中的自我效能感，以及绘制的核心概念工具使推理可视化。这些发现表明，核心概念作为推理工具使用时，有助于学生解释而非记忆生理现象，从而支持更深入的学习以及将知识迁移到新情境中。我们还发现，绘制的支架工具在帮助学生组织思维、使抽象系统更易于理解以及支持机制性推理方面发挥着关键作用。本研究是首次对学生对生理学核心概念在其学习和推理过程中所起作用的看法进行定性分析。我们探讨了学生如何看待在学习中使用生理学核心概念的益处。学生认为核心概念指导并加强他们跨主题的推理，同时提高他们对理解和推理能力的信心。我们的研究结果为教育工作者提供了关于为何以及如何将生理学核心概念融入教学的有用见解。
