{"id":71,"date":"2016-04-20T02:07:18","date_gmt":"2016-04-20T02:07:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/mikearsenault\/?p=71"},"modified":"2016-04-21T16:08:41","modified_gmt":"2016-04-21T16:08:41","slug":"misconceptions-in-biology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/mikearsenault\/2016\/04\/20\/misconceptions-in-biology\/","title":{"rendered":"Misconceptions in Biology"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/mikearsenault\/files\/2016\/04\/misconception-definition.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-72\" src=\"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/mikearsenault\/files\/2016\/04\/misconception-definition-300x125.jpg\" alt=\"misconception-definition\" width=\"300\" height=\"125\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/mikearsenault\/files\/2016\/04\/misconception-definition-300x125.jpg 300w, https:\/\/cohort21.com\/mikearsenault\/files\/2016\/04\/misconception-definition.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 960px) 75vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a>\u00a0Travis Fuchs (@TTHFuchs) and I have spent a sizeable chunk of time through the winter months looking at &#8220;Misconceptions&#8221; in biology. We have recently submitted an application to STAO (<a href=\"https:\/\/stao.ca\/cms\/\">Science Teachers Association of Ontario<\/a>) to provide a poster presentation at the 2016 fall conference. We are also planning to publish a paper in an educational journal once we have it better fleshed out. Here is the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/document\/d\/15T4WHPbpIyiFMq2krLpGCrC2JDyYf3XVegeAhy2hT8Q\/edit\">preliminary summary<\/a>\u00a0of what we have done and what we have found so far. We are still iterating this project. In a nutshell, we have taken 20 years of the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.biocomp.utoronto.ca\/past-comps\/exams\">National Biology Competition<\/a>\u00a0test items and compared it to summary data published each year by Corey Goldman, the Competition Coordinator at U of T, regarding the efficacy of the test. The study involves over 104,000 students. We categorized and scored 1,082 multiple choice items using criteria established by Philip Sadler\u00a0<em>et al<\/em>\u00a0(2013) in his paper &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.researchgate.net\/publication\/276891366_The_Influence_of_Teachers'_Knowledge_on_Student_Learning_in_Middle_School_Physical_Science_Classrooms\">The Influence of Teachers\u2019 Knowledge on Student Learning in Middle School Physical Science Classrooms<\/a>&#8220;. We found 115 new misconception questions. This is actually quite a big deal (difficult to find these types of questions) as we consider the impact that teaching has on student understanding through a variety of topics in Biology.<\/p>\n<p>It is always important to place the credit where it is due, and Travis is really the brains behind this study. Some of his research efforts while at Harvard centered around the topic of &#8220;Misconceptions in Science&#8221; \u00a0and it was by a fortuitous stroke of luck that we utilized the National Biology Competition dataset that I had been collecting throughout my teaching career. I have learned so much by doing this project with him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0Travis Fuchs (@TTHFuchs) and I have spent a sizeable chunk of time through the winter months looking at &#8220;Misconceptions&#8221; in biology. We have recently submitted an application to STAO (Science Teachers Association of Ontario) to provide a poster presentation at the 2016 fall conference. We are also planning to publish a paper in an educational &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/mikearsenault\/2016\/04\/20\/misconceptions-in-biology\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Misconceptions in Biology&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":116,"featured_media":72,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[11,13,12],"class_list":["post-71","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-action-plan","category-face-2-face-sessions","tag-biology","tag-misconception","tag-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/mikearsenault\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/mikearsenault\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/mikearsenault\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/mikearsenault\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/116"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/mikearsenault\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/mikearsenault\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/mikearsenault\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/mikearsenault\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/mikearsenault\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/mikearsenault\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}