NSF Award
2400797
This project seeks to serve the national interest by developing learning theory crucial for guiding instructional transformation in undergraduate physiology towards principle-based reasoning. Many undergraduate science students leave science fields due to the perception of excessive memorization and lack of guidance on complex topics. Principle-based reasoning reduces reliance on memorization by supporting students’ use of fundamental principles and scientific reasoning when approaching complex problems. With approximately 650,000 students annually enrolled in introductory biology and 450,000 in anatomy & physiology across the nation, it's imperative to shift instruction towards conceptual understanding if we are to improve Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education, increase retention of a diverse population of students and thus create a more diverse STEM workforce. The Physiology Principles project will build learning theory to characterize how students learn and coordinate science knowledge to develop principle-based reasoning. To capture a diverse range of student experiences, the project's investigators will pursue this research in introductory physiology courses that represent three important populations: pre-allied health majors at a community college, non-majors at a research-intensive institution, and biology majors at a residential liberal arts college within a research-intensive institution. As many of the students at these three institutions have career goals of becoming physician assistants, nurses, medical technologists, pharmacologists, physicians and other healthcare professionals, helping these students develop strong reasoning skills will enhance their abilities to solve the medical problems they encounter as well as be able to better explain the medical issue and prescribed treatments to the patient.<br/><br/>This project will bring together students and researchers from Michigan State University, the University of Wisconsin, Madison and Waubonsee Community College to investigate how students develop principle-based reasoning, a rigorous form of mechanistic reasoning supported by metacognition and grounded in scientific principles. Specifically, the project team will develop learning theory that describes students’ conceptual development of flux and mass balance principle-based reasoning in introductory physiology courses; and the mechanisms of learning by which classroom practices framed by principles support the development of principle-based reasoning. To accomplish this, groups of students enrolled in the courses described above will be recorded during in-class discussions and interviewed across the semester. The project team will employ microgenetic learning analysis to adapt, revise and integrate coordination class theory and metacognition theory to develop a theory that proposes a mechanism for how physiology knowledge is organized and reorganized over time and how the contexts influence this learning. The project will expand the scope of coordination class theory to four contexts not previously studied: 1) students working in small groups during class, 2) students learning across an entire semester, 3) students learning Biology, and 4) students coordinating metacognitive epistemic resources with their conceptual knowledge resources. This project will also gather data about how each instructor incorporates these principles into how they teach and assess their class, as this will provide insight as to the role of the curriculum in supporting the development of principle-based reasoning. The project team will disseminate results from this project by publishing in relevant scholarly journals and presenting at regional and national STEM and discipline-based education conferences. The project team will also develop online modules for the American Physiology Society’s Center for Physiology Education to allow any faculty across the United States to access these resources as they prepare to and teach their courses. This project is supported by NSF’s EDU Core Research (ECR) program. The ECR program emphasizes fundamental STEM education research that generates foundational knowledge in the field. Investments are made in critical areas that are essential, broad and enduring: STEM learning and STEM learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM workforce development.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
