By Mildred Hoover
Biology Department

Mildred Hoover, Department of Biology

As educators, when do we truly become inspired? For me the date was December 1999 when I had the opportunity to visit with Dr. Nancy Pelaez, then a new biology professor at California State Fullerton who had formerly been a high school science teacher. You see, I had done research work in an earlier life and was interested in pursuing these interests in addition to my teaching career. Through a summer teacher research stipend from the American Physiology Society, I was able to do research on sea quirts (a marine ascidian tunicate) in the summer of 2000 and made the decision to pursue my doctorate in science education at Curtin University of Technology, Western Australia. This was the beginning of a journey that brought me to the Biology Department at Salem State College in September 2005. Here, I not only teach major and non-majors introductory biology courses but also undergraduate and graduate courses for students wanting to become biology teachers.

Inquiry-Based Laboratory Instruction

Biology in the 1800s was taught using lectures with emphasis on learning facts; lab instruction was not the norm until the twentieth century. In the last part of the twentieth century laboratory instruction became increasingly associated with new approaches to teaching based on emerging theories of learning, the empowering nature of new technologies, increasing emphasis on research experiences, and changes in the manner in which people work together to investigate. Biology is undergoing a revolution, with breakthrough discoveries and new technologies and techniques transforming the kinds of questions we can ask and the ways investigations take place. It is clear that students become excited and interested in biology when we use teaching strategies that incorporate inquiry-approaches to learning. Opportunities for student involvement and teacher support during lab instruction contribute to an effective learning environment that may reveal misconceptions that students have and further clarify content presented in lecture. Students who participate in inquiry-based laboratory investigations have the opportunity to visualize, understand, and manipulate biological variables.

To better understand how to appropriately help students learn using new techniques, I decided to explore how to help them understand blood circulation for my doctoral research. I used an inquiry-based laboratory approach to give high school biology students an opportunity to observe blood circulation in live animals, investigate how the cardiovascular system works, and conduct investigations to answer puzzling questions about animal physiology. Students observed blood transport using microscopes or digital video (delivered with Video and Image Data – VIDA, a science image project partnered with the BiosciEdNet-BEN) of the egg, embryo, and juvenile stages of zebrafish (Danio rerio), California blackworm (Lumbriculus variegates), and the water flea (Daphnia) to challenge their often naive ideas and misconceptions about blood, the heart, and circulatory patterns.

Assessment of Inquiry-Based Learning

To assess students’ attitudes toward using microscopes and digital video, I used What Is Happening In this Class? (WIHIC – that has assessed students’ perception of their learning environment in Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, and Taiwan) to detect how students perceived their classroom environment and how they made sense of what they learned. The WIHIC is a 56-item instrument that assesses seven classroom environment dimensions: Student Cohesiveness, Teacher Support, Involvement, Investigation, Task Orientation, Cooperation and Equity. I found that students perceived higher levels of Cooperation (students cooperate rather than compete with one another) and Cohesiveness (students know, help and are supportive of one another) in their classroom with both types of lab instruction. Second, students felt they were more involved and their teachers supported them more. Third and most interesting of all, students had a more positive perception of the Investigation dimension when using microscopes. This study was one of the first detailed examinations of the effect of various forms of laboratory investigation as students learn about blood transport at the secondary school level. To my knowledge there are no nationally normed tests in the US that show students performing better after learning this way. It may be difficult for most teachers and high schools with existing resources to support using microscopes to observe live organisms, but a real possibility using the VIDA collection (available on the Internet) in biology classrooms. Not only did students benefit from these innovative strategies, but for me, this experience was not only life changing but motivated me to continue trying new approaches in helping students become aware of the importance of inquiry in learning biology. Along with my students I experienced biology in a new light and become inspired, excited and motivated to try new approaches in my teaching.

I continue to collaborate with Nancy Pelaez, now a physiology professor at Purdue University. Our latest endeavors include exploring the use of the VIDA collection to help undergraduate bioscience faculty (a) improve their ability to teach life science, (b) be informed about research on effective teaching, (c) build on and contribute to the pool of knowledge concerning effective approaches in undergraduate life science education, and (d) make instruction more efficient and effective. During the past two summers and winter breaks, I have had the opportunity to conduct research on how smooth muscle surrounding arteries respond to changes in blood flow due to the oxygen deprivation in crayfish at Purdue University. So in closing I have the best of both worlds – teaching and research.

This article is part of ASpect’s February 2009 issue, The Cutting Edge in Research and Teaching.