Development of the Biology Card Sorting Task to Measure Conceptual Expertise in Biology
Development of the Biology Card Sorting Task to Measure Conceptual Expertise in Biology
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DOI：
10.1187/cbe.13-05-0096
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发表时间：
2013-12-01
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
Tanner, Kimberly D.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Smith, Julia I.;Combs, Elijah D.;Tanner, Kimberly D.
人们普遍希望将本科生物学教育的重点放在教学生像生物学家一样进行概念思考上；然而，缺乏评估工具来衡量从新手到专家的生物学概念思维的进展。我们提出了一种新的评估工具的发展，生物卡片分类任务，旨在探索个人如何组织他们的生物学概念知识。虽然以认知心理学的任务为模型，但该任务的独特之处在于其设计测试了两种假设的生物知识组织概念框架：1)侧重于生物体类型的表面特征组织和2)侧重于基本生物学概念的深层特征组织。在对生物卡片分类任务的初步调查中，当用于比较假定的生物专家（生物教员）和新手（非生物专业本科生）的卡片分类结果时，六种分析方法中的每一种都显示出统计学上的显著差异。一贯地，生物学专业的教师似乎根据假设的深层特征进行分类，而非生物学专业的学生似乎根据表面特征或非假设的组织框架进行分类。结果表明，这种新颖的任务在区分生物学专家和生物学新手群体方面是强大的，并且可能是跟踪新兴生物学概念专业知识的适应性工具。
There are widespread aspirations to focus undergraduate biology education on teaching students to think conceptually like biologists; however, there is a dearth of assessment tools designed to measure progress from novice to expert biological conceptual thinking. We present the development of a novel assessment tool, the Biology Card Sorting Task, designed to probe how individuals organize their conceptual knowledge of biology. While modeled on tasks from cognitive psychology, this task is unique in its design to test two hypothesized conceptual frameworks for the organization of biological knowledge: 1) a surface feature organization focused on organism type and 2) a deep feature organization focused on fundamental biological concepts. In this initial investigation of the Biology Card Sorting Task, each of six analytical measures showed statistically significant differences when used to compare the card sorting results of putative biological experts (biology faculty) and novices (non-biology major undergraduates). Consistently, biology faculty appeared to sort based on hypothesized deep features, while non-biology majors appeared to sort based on either surface features or nonhypothesized organizational frameworks. Results suggest that this novel task is robust in distinguishing populations of biology experts and biology novices and may be an adaptable tool for tracking emerging biology conceptual expertise.