Application of Research on Learning to College Teaching: Ecological Examples

Abstract

These approaches to biological modeling and to common student misconceptions can certainly be used by biologists in different fields, but as an ecologist, I have observed that the application of cognitive research to college teaching appears to be less common in ecology teaching than in other scientific fields. To assess this hypothesis, I counted the number of articles on teaching physics, biology, chemistry, geology, and ecology that were published from 1997 to 2002 in The Journal of Research in Science Teaching, a good source for articles about cognition and learning. Over this period, most articles focused on teaching physics (33), followed by chemistry (21) and biology (19) (figure In these three disciplines, about half the studies dealt with college teaching. In contrast, during the same period, 7 articles featured ecology teaching; most of these articles concerned environmental science, and all focused on grades K-12. These results are not surprising, given the number of basic physics, biology, and chemistry