Using Biological Scientific Principles to Analyze and Explain Current Health and Environment News

Indexing

Title

Using Biological Scientific Principles to Analyze and Explain Real-World Phenomenon

Summary

The design pattern generates assessment tasks that require students to identify relevant biological principles at play in current events related to health and the environment, and then to analyze and critique the reported finding or phenomena using a step-by-step application of the relevant biological principles.

Rationale

Public understanding of current events involving scientific findings and phenomena is enhanced when citizens can link those events to core biological principles. Such a skill permits citizens to think critically about scientific discovery that is unfolding during their lives.

Student Model

Focal knowledge, skills, abilities (grade level implicit)

Ability to identify, among choices, the appropriate biological principle(s) relevant to specific news reports about health and environmental phenomena. (schematic knowledge)

Ability to make explicit the tacit biological principles and reasoning that are relevant to specific news reports about health and environmental phenomena. (schematic knowledge)

Ability to place news reports about biological phenomena into a historical context of scientific discovery about essential biological principles. In other words, students can demonstrate why certain discoveries are of high interest to the scientific community. (schematic knowledge)

Ability to apply the new information in the news report to situations involving one's personal health, matters of public health, or environmental policy. (strategic knowledge)

Knowledge that (declarative knowledge):

Environmental quality:

• The understanding that all life on Earth as we know it adapted because of the capacity of plant cells to, through photosynthesis, convert carbon dioxide into more complex forms and release oxygen from water. The related understanding that when organic matter is consumed or destroyed, the carbon released into the atmosphere in the form of CO₂ is generated by fungi, bacteria, and animals consuming or destroying the matter.
• The understanding that the environment is constantly changing and species are adapting to these changes. In natural selection, some members of a population will contain mutations that permit greater survival to these environmental changes. One method of environmental change is by humans, which may occur so rapidly that species do not have time to adapt. The related understanding that evolution of living things is not teleological, but rather, based on replication/reproduction that lead to an expanding diversity of genotypes, and therefore, phenotypes. Selection pressure acts on phenotypes.
• The understanding that when material goes into the soil, these materials are transformed into other forms in large part because of metabolic processes of organisms.
• The understanding that studying how living things evolve specific functions for reproduction, development, homeostasis, environmental response, and energy consumption can inform the design of new technologies that can improve life.

Personal health:

• The understanding that body functions are based on maintaining cellular health and therefore the health of the organism; exercise and food intake directly influence the life of cells, including their capacity to convert glucose to energy using oxygen. Cells need a continuous supply of energy to perform a variety of constantly occurring functions. The related understanding that all cells in the body are self-replicating and engaged in a continual cycle of life. In other words, the cells we are born with in our body are not those we die with, but rather the descendants of those original cells.
• The understanding that specialized cellular functions are based on both hereditary and developmental factors. These cellular functions can be disturbed any time in the life of the organism because of problems relating to genetics, aging, poor lifestyle, disease or environmental toxins.
• The understanding that healthy cell functioning is dependent upon the ability to maintain homeostatic internal balance and to respond to changing conditions in the surrounding environment. Disturbances in normal cellular function can lead to health problems or death.
• The importance of using drugs judiciously to fight pathogens (e.g., bacteria, viruses) because these are life forms that evolve and may develop a resistance to our drugs.
• The understanding that studying how living things evolve specific functions for reproduction, development, homeostasis, environmental response, and energy consumption can inform the design of new lifestyle, environmental, and nutrition choices that can improve life.

Public health:

• The importance of monitoring how the public uses drugs to fight pathogens (e.g., bacteria, viruses) because these are life forms that evolve and may develop resistance to our drugs.
• The importance of promoting widespread public access to practices and procedures such as hand washing, vaccinations, healthy lifestyle, regular physical and dental checkups to monitor body functions and combat/prevent disease, vector control, maternal health practices, and genetic testing to maintain quality public health.
• The understanding that studying how living things evolve specific functions for reproduction, development, homeostasis, environmental response, and energy consumption can inform the design of new health treatments that can improve life.

Additional KSAs

Familiarity with the underlying declarative knowledge of cellular self-replication processes (i.e., a gene and a protein are not the same)

Familiarity with the underlying declarative knowledge of cellular metabolic pathways for living organisms (photosynthesis) (glycolysis prepares glucose for conversion to usable energy via anaerobic or aerobic chemical processes; anaerobic is typically less efficient than aerobic)

Familiarity with underlying declarative knowledge that genetic mutation occurs in replicating gene sequences and some of those mutations make a species more adaptable to prevailing environmental conditions.

Familiarity with underlying declarative knowledge of osmosis and the basis of exchange through the cell membrane

Familiarity with the declarative knowledge that antibiotics do not work alone but rather, must work in partnership with the hosts immune system

Familiarity with underlying declarative knowledge of receptors on cell surfaces to permit delivery of key messages for cellular function and communication. These messages trigger reactions in the cell.

Familiarity with the hierarchical organization of life.

Basic skills of reading and writing.

Ability to interpret and analyze tabular and graphical data?

Basic computational and arithmetic skills.

Understanding the steps of the scientific method.

Evidence Model

Potential observations (student actions)

(How would we recognize the focal KSAs when we see them?)

Quality of student identifying the correct biological principle(s) in play in a news report.

Quality of providing sufficient detail and accurate sequence to explain how the biological principle(s) function in the news report.

Quality of linking a finding in the news report to biological dogma and principles to characterize how the finding advances prior scientific knowledge. (e.g., so what?)

Quality of generating a set of appropriate new personal or public policy practices that apply the findings in the news report, or, by contrast, being able to explain why the news report does not necessarily lead to any changes in existing personal or public policy practice.

Quality of recognizing and correcting a common misconception

Potential work products (artifacts)

Multiple choice question (e.g., linking the news finding to appropriate biological principles)

Short answer response

Written explanation, with diagrams as needed, to illustrate steps in a biological process

Argument advocating for or against a specific public health or environmental policy recommendation, citing relevant theory from biological principles and evidence from news report

In class, I might have the students develop something like a public health pamphlet, however, this wouldn’t be appropriate for the time constraints of the assessment at hand

Potential rubrics

3 -- Student identifies correct biological principle(s), provides elaborated step-by-step description of underlying biological process, and describes the specific scientific significance (or lack thereof) of the reported finding

2 -- Student identifies correct biological principle(s), provides a generally correct sequential description of the underlying biological process, and provides a generally correct characterization of the scientific significance (or lack thereof) of the reported finding.

1 -- Student correctly identifies biological principle(s), but may not provide a generally sequential description of the underlying biological process, and does not provide a generally correct characterization of the scientific significance (or lack thereof) of the reported finding.

0 -- Student fails to identify the correct biological principle.

Task Model

Characteristic task features

Task must include a news report of either a health or environmental phenomenon OR a scientific finding relevant to health or the environment (additional layer of difficulty: maybe item isn't so obviously tied to health? E.g. discovery microbes, or discovery of DNA. Or maybe this would be too difficult)

Task must require students to apply biological principle(s) and either: (1) characterize the relative significance of the news for biological science, or (2) describe the changes in personal or public policy practice that logically flow from the news or (3) do both.

Variable task features

Familiarity of the topic of the news report.

Number of relevant biological principles

Level of technical detail required to explain the relevance of the news

Genre of information presentation (e.g., a mass media report or a popular scientific journal report or an email from a relative/friend or a claim published on a commercial product)