Current Research in Biology Education

Konstantinos Korfiatis is Associate Professor of Environmental Education at the Department of Education, University of Cyprus. He is, since 2016, a member of the Academic Committee of ERIDOB (European Researchers in Didactics of Biology). His research interests expand to the areas of environmental education, ecology and sustainability education. Marcus Grace is Professor of Science Education and former Head of the Education School at the University of Southampton, UK. His main interests include learning and teaching about socio-scientific issues, particularly biodiversity conservation and outdoor science education. He is Chair of the Academic Committee of ERIDOB (European Researchers in Didactics of Biology), and has researched and published widely on education for socio-scientific issues with colleagues around the world.

• Part I. Socioscientific issues, Nature of Science and scientific thinking.- 1. The relevancy of science education to public engagement with science.- 2. Engaging in argumentation as critical evaluation of the anti-vaccination movement.- 3. Theory of planned behavior in the context of stem cell donation.- 4. Prior knowledge, epistemic beliefs and socio-scientific topic context as predictors of the diversity of arguments on socio-scientific issues.- 5. Toward a questionnaire to assess biology student teachers’ knowledge of the nature of scientific inquiry (NOSI).- 6. Introducing primary school students to aspects of the nature of scientific knowledge.- Part II. Teaching and learning in biology.- 7. Digital narratives for biology learning.- 8. Digital first? Effects of digital and analogue learning tools on the plant knowledge acquisition of fututre biology teachers.- 9. Comparing inquiry-based learning and interactive lectures while teaching physiology to undergradate students.- 10. Train the trainer in the jigsaw puzzle of biology education: effects of mentor training on teaching quality.- 11. The assessment of an educational proposal to address the relationship between genetic information and protein synthesis.- 12. Evaluating the effectiveness of a teaching intervention in a marine biology course: the case of Greek vocational students.- 13. Promoting students’ understanding of gene-environment interaction in genetics education.- 14. Students’ conceptions as a neglected perspective in trainee teachers’ biology lesson plans.- Part III. Perceptions of biology and biology education.- 15. Students’ opinions about interdisciplinary lessons.- 16. Correlation between the popularity and difficulty of secondary school biology and perceived importance of knowledge acquired for personal wellbeing.- 17. Perception of biological disciplines by upper secondary school students.- 18. Analyzing the relationships between pre-service biology teachers' modelling processes, scientific reasoning competencies and general cognitive abilities.- 19. The pitfalls of using presentation technology in the biology classroom.- Part IV. Textbook analysis.- 20. Human reproduction in Greek Secondary Education textbooks (1870s to present).- 21. Exploring logico-semantic relations of historical gene models in similar genetic content in Greek biology school textbooks.- Part V. Outdoor and environmental education.- 22. Children’s interests and orientations towards nature: views from young children in England.- 23. Picturing the urban environment: using photovoice to bring university students’ views and voices into urban environmental education.