scholarly journals PEDAGOGICAL PRACTICES ADOPTED BY TEACHERS WHEN USING IMPROVISED RESOURCES IN LIFE SCIENCES CLASSROOMS

Author(s):  
Syamthanda Zondi ◽  
◽  
Sam Ramaila ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 107780042097874
Author(s):  
Anne Beate Reinertsen

The idea of this article is to interrogate what I conceive of as an onto-epistemic acceleration and knowledge production spoken by life. Immanent knowledge practices for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Love, care, learning, and collective responsibility transmigrating throughout the aeons of time. It is an attempt to write planetary differential Activist Pedagogies and Life Sciences: experimentations and explorations of putting parts of components together, reaching into the future, playing toward an interest. It is a nonlinear, mannerist, and poetic approach to education, learning and play, research, and pedagogical practices of critique. An approach and style possibilizing and opening up for affective becomings in which ongoing processes are vitalist parts of ontological change. I work with thinkable categories as they disappear, collaboratively linked to a natural web of human and more-than-human agents. It implies a de-facto end of critique or a normalizing of judgment and/or our assessment practices: a Deleuzian clinical practice. Counting myself in and staying accountable to my immanent situatedness, to the child. Processes seen as zero points in action only graspable in hindsight, hence always unpredictable. Affective processes bring concepts into play and seek to continue keeping them in play. Concepts are thus always performative and methodological, inherently experimental, and open to yet-unknown territories of thought. I speak of happenings in language. Thinking with, through, and beyond concepts involves developing conceptual foci while also, and at the same time, designing for debate. I ask, how to continue not knowing what is right or wrong even in times of crisis?


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos C. Goller ◽  
Melissa C. Srougi ◽  
Stefanie H. Chen ◽  
Laura R. Schenkman ◽  
Robert M. Kelly

The accelerating expansion of online bioinformatics tools has profoundly impacted molecular biology, with such tools becoming integral to the modern life sciences. As a result, molecular biology laboratory education must train students to leverage bioinformatics in meaningful ways to be prepared for a spectrum of careers. Institutions of higher learning can benefit from a flexible and dynamic instructional paradigm that blends up-to-date bioinformatics training with best practices in molecular biology laboratory pedagogy. At North Carolina State University, the campus-wide interdisciplinary Biotechnology (BIT) Program has developed cutting-edge, flexible, inquiry-based Molecular Biology Laboratory Education Modules (MBLEMs). MBLEMs incorporate relevant online bioinformatics tools using evidenced-based pedagogical practices and in alignment with national learning frameworks. Students in MBLEMs engage in the most recent experimental developments in modern biology (e.g., CRISPR, metagenomics) through the strategic use of bioinformatics, in combination with wet-lab experiments, to address research questions. MBLEMs are flexible educational units that provide a menu of inquiry-based laboratory exercises that can be used as complete courses or as parts of existing courses. As such, MBLEMs are designed to serve as resources for institutions ranging from community colleges to research-intensive universities, involving a diverse range of learners. Herein, we describe this new paradigm for biology laboratory education that embraces bioinformatics as a critical component of inquiry-based learning for undergraduate and graduate students representing the life sciences, the physical sciences, and engineering.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence Clement ◽  
Jennie B. Dorman ◽  
Richard McGee

AbstractWe describe here the development and validation of the Academic Career Readiness Assessment (ACRA) rubric, an instrument that was designed to provide more equity in mentoring, transparency in hiring, and accountability in training of aspiring faculty in the life sciences. We report here the results of interviews with faculty at 20 U.S. institutions which resulted in the identification of 14 qualifications and levels of achievement required for obtaining a faculty position at three groups of institutions: research-intensive (R), teaching-only (T), and research and teaching-focused (RT). T institutions hire candidates on teaching experience and pedagogical practices, and on their ability to serve diverse student populations. RT institutions hire faculty on both research and teaching-related qualifications, as well as on the ability to support students in the laboratory. R institutions hire candidates mainly on their research achievements and potential, which may limit the diversification of the life science academic pathway.


Author(s):  
Portia Seloma ◽  
◽  
Sam Ramaila ◽  

This study examined pedagogical practices adopted by teachers when teaching learners taking English as First Additional Language in Life Sciences classrooms. The inquiry adopted a generic qualitative design located within the interpretivist paradigm and involved purposively selected Life Sciences teachers and grade 10 learners from South African township schools as participants. Qualitative data was collected through semi-structured interviews and classroom observations. The empirical investigation is underpinned by the Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) as the underlying theoretical framework. The study uncovered a myriad of instructional challenges facing Life Sciences teachers and learners associated with the use of English as a medium of instruction while it is taken as a First Additional Language by the learners. In particular, the terminology used in Life Sciences as a key knowledge domain posed fundamental instructional challenges in relation to meaningful development of enhanced learners’ conceptual understanding of scientific phenomena. Theoretical implications for meaningful science teaching and learning are discussed.


Author(s):  
Andreas Hofmann ◽  
Anne Simon ◽  
Tanja Grkovic ◽  
Malcolm Jones
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