Although ecology faculty have extensive research training, most do not realize that they can do research in their own courses. This is a different kind of research than we are used to — often not controlled, without replicates, and so on. But it is still research because we can develop hypotheses, ask specific questions based on these hypotheses, and then collect and analyze data which in turn inform the questions and hypotheses. There are numerous journals dedicated to interesting research on teaching (e.g., Journal of Research in Science Teaching).
One type of classroom research is called “Action Research.” In this type of research, faculty ask specific questions about their students or their teaching, gain information about these questions, and use this information to learn about teaching and their course in particular. A list of Action Research websites are below. Action research is an aspect of “Scientific Teaching” (Handelsman et al. 2004).
Below we describe a four-step process which you can use to conduct research on your use of the Frontiers article. The theoretical bases for this TIEE Scientific Teaching are three areas of research on learning (D’Avanzo 2003 a,b): metacognition (knowing what we know), misconceptions (firmly held beliefs that are incorrect) and adult development stage theory (stages that learners are thought to go through as their thinking about a discipline matures). Read more about these theories here.
Misconceptions: students come to class with background knowledge that may or may not be correct; when incorrect this information is called a misconception (or prior/alternative/intuitive conception). Students’ misconceptions are notoriously difficult to change, and numerous studies show that students come to class – and leave – with the same content misinformation even when the content is directly dealt with in a class.
As emphasized in the “Notes to Faculty” section, you can use this article to address a misconception shared by many ecology students: change is “bad.” That students have this misconception may surprise you – which is one of the reasons why students retain these alternative conceptions. Faculty are unaware of them!
The next section provides suggestions for assessing whether your students have this misconception, how you can use the Barange article to specifically address it, and then seeing if/how much the misconception changed as a result of your “interception”:
For this essay, students are asked to respond to a comment about this figure supposedly written by another student. The idea is to compare their response to an ecology expert’s (e.g., you).
For homework give students this figure plus the paragraph below written by “a student” and ask them to write a one-page (300 words or so) analysis of the student’s commentary. Along with your written description of the homework assignment, give a little background of the figure (such as the location, what a fir is, and that Growth Index indicates rate of tree growth). You may also need to explain a double-y type plot if students have not seen one before.
In the essays, you are looking for the kinds of comments you would expect from an ecologist, e.g., that the “student” 1) describes some of the patterns evident in the figure but misses others (and gives examples), 2) rightly observes the similar patterns in the fish and tree data, but does not suggest a likely reason (that they both are responding to some environmental factor such as weather), and 3) comments that given the large variation in both trees and fish over this time period, the statement that the decline from 1960 on “doesn’t look so good” is unwarranted. Only excellent students would clearly describe each of these points.
If you have a large class, you can skim these essays — or look at a sample subset. You don’t need to grade these, but give students a point or two for doing the work.
“Well one thing for sure is that the fish catch changes a lot from 1920 to 1990 — I mean just look at the numbers — it’s all over the place and goes from 0 way up to more than 800 thousand tonnes. The tree growth changes an awful lot too, although I am not sure what growth index means. The fact that the fish and tree numbers seem to go up and down together may be just a coincidence, I don’t know. Overall two things make we wonder about the health of the fish and the trees. The first is that the numbers for both go up and down so much. The second is that there is pretty much a steady decline in both from 1960 on — that doesn’t look so good.”