Matthew Kloser is an Associate Professor and Fellow at the Institute for Educational Initiatives and the founding director of the Center for STEM Education at the University of Notre Dame. His talk was titled "Is Biology Education Evolving? Critiquing Three Cases of High School and Undergraduate Biology Education Reform." 

Abstract

Questions are at the heart of biological inquiry. The discipline is shaped by an endless variety of avenues for investigation and an equally diverse and creative set of methods that help justify claims about the living world. Yet, biology as taught in schools rarely reflects the structure of the discipline as carried out at the bench or in the field. This talk will compare the affordances and constraints of three cases of reform in biological education across high school and undergraduate contexts. Emerging evidence from the cases will be used to promote discussion about the frontiers of biology education in particular and science education more broadly.