Questions Biology Teachers Are Asking - An Interview With Anton e. Lawson

bout Anton E. LawsonProfessor Lawson’s career in biology education

began in the late 1960s in California where he taughtmiddle school science and mathematics for three yearsbefore completing his Ph.D. at the University ofOklahoma and moving to Purdue University in 1973.Lawson continued his research career at the LawrenceHall of Science, University of California, Berkeley in1974, and then moved to Arizona State University in1977, where he currently conducts research and teachescourses in biology, biology teaching methods, andresearch methods. Lawson has published more than200 articles and more than 20 books including Science

Teaching and the Development of Thinking (Wadsworth:Belmont, CA, 1995), Biology: A Critical ThinkingApproach (Addison Wesley: Menlo Park, CA, 1994), andThe Neurological Basis of Learning, Development andDiscovery (Kluwer: Dordrecht, The Netherlands, 2003).Lawson’s most recent book is an introductory biologytextbook called Biology: An Inquiry Approach(Kendall/Hunt; Dubuque, IA, 2004). Lawson is perhapsbest known for his research articles in science educa-tion, which have three times been judged to be the mostsignificant articles of the year by the NationalAssociation for Research in Science Teaching (NARST).He has also received NARST’s career award forDistinguished Contributions to Science EducationResearch as well as the Outstanding Science Educator ofthe Year Award by the Association for the Education ofTeachers in Science.

AN INTER VIE W WITH

Anton E. Lawson

QuestionsBIOLOGY TEACHERS ARE ASKING:

AL I B E R ATO C A R D E L L I N I

LIBERATO CARDELLINI is a Professor in the Department of Materialsand Earth Sciences at the Marche Polytechnic University, 60131Ancona, Italy; e-mail: [email protected]. continued on page 142

140 THE AMERICAN BIOLOGY TEACHER, VOLUME 67, NO. 3, MARCH 2005

11237-ABT MarchMag 3/17/05 1:14 AM Page 140

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Cardellini: Why did you choose to become ateacher?

Lawson: In a sense, teaching chose me. In 1968while the Vietnam War was still raging, I was abiology graduate student at the University ofOregon. At about the time I finished my master’sdegree, my draft board stopped issuing defer-ments for graduate students, but continueddeferments for teachers. So I took a job teachingscience and mathematics at a middle school inthe San Francisco Bay area. By the time the warended and I could return to graduate school, Ihad become so fascinated by the complexities ofteaching that I decided to conduct my doctoralresearch on students instead of snails.

Cardellini: Who are your intellectual fathers andwhat did you learn from them?

Lawson: My intellectual fathers were my fatherChet Lawson, and Jack Renner and Bob Karplus.When I was about eight years old, I recall ridingin the back seat of our car on a family trip toPennsylvania. The sky was full of clouds, somebrilliant white, others dark, almost black. So Iasked my father why the clouds were different“colors.” His reply was typical: “Good question,Tony—what ideas do you have?” I do not recallthe rest of the conversation except to say I amcertain that he did not tell me the right answer,which I am sure he knew. I suspect that growingup on a steady diet of these sorts of exchangestaught me to enjoy thinking about, and trying toexplain, things. This lesson was reinforced sever-al times by Jack Renner, my doctoral committeechair. Jack liked to say that giving students theright answers stops, rather than starts, thinking.During the 1970s, I had the good fortune ofworking with Bob Karplus at the Lawrence Hallof Science. I learned way too much from Bob toenumerate particulars except to say that it was ajoy working with such a brilliant, energetic, andhard working person. For teachers who do notknow of Bob’s many contributions to scienceeducation, I strongly recommend reading A Loveof Discovery: Science Education—The Second Careerof Robert Karplus (Fuller, 2002), which contains acollection of his works.

Cardellini: What components of Jean Piaget’s theory are important for teachers?

Lawson: Perhaps the first thing to understandabout Piaget’s theory is that he was talking aboutthe acquisition of “how to” knowledge (proce-dural knowledge) and its importance in theacquisition of “know that” knowledge (declara-tive knowledge). For example, one needs to

know how to count to know that there are ten mar-bles on the table. In biology, one needs to knowhow to sort, classify and seriate to know thatspecies diversity increases from the poles to theequator. And one needs to know how to test the-ories to know that evolution has occurred asopposed to special creation.

According to Piaget’s theory, the development ofprocedural knowledge occurs as a consequence ofboth physical and social experience, neurologicalmaturation, and self-regulation. Self-regulationoccurs when self-generated ideas and behaviorsare contradicted. These contradictions lead notonly to new ideas and new behaviors, but also toimproved reasoning abilities. The evidence cer-tainly supports this view. Perhaps the most impor-tant implication is that the really importantaspects of science and mathematics literacy, suchas effective reasoning and problem-solving abili-ties, cannot be directly taught. Instead, they arethe products of intellectual development.

A serious educational problem stems in partfrom the fact that although people generallyknow if and when they learned a specific piece ofdeclarative knowledge, they seldom know if andwhen their procedural knowledge developed.This means people who lack higher-order rea-soning abilities do not realize their deficiencieswhile people who have developed higher-orderreasoning abilities assume incorrectly that every-one else has developed them as well! Not sur-prisingly a number of problems result, not theleast is that many teachers, administrators, testdevelopers, and policy makers ignore proceduralknowledge and focus solely on teaching and test-ing declarative knowledge. I am afraid thatbecause the pace of intellectual development lagsin so many students, a huge portion of what wetry to teach junior high and high school students(and even many college students) is missing themark. Instead, it simply “goes in one ear and outthe other.” I certainly recall my own experienceas a student taking high school biology. I learnednext to nothing in spite of receiving a goodgrade. The good news is that once the problem isunderstood, there is a lot that teachers can do tohelp students develop their reasoning abilitiesand construct understanding of the really impor-tant scientific concepts and theories.

Cardellini: In books and articles, you have demon-strated that some misconceptions are persistent(e.g., Lawson, Lewis & Birk, 1999). How can wedeal with students’ errors?

Lawson: The article you cite provides a wonderfulexample. The phenomenon in question involves



a lighted candle sitting in a pan of water. Whenan inverted glass is placed over the candle andinto the water, the flame goes out and the waterrushes up into the glass. Many students initiallybelieve that the water rises because the flame“consumes” the oxygen trapped under the glass,so the water is “sucked” in to replace the now-empty space. This explanation contains two mis-conceptions. First, flames do not consume any-thing in the sense that matter is not destroyed.Instead, flames convert oxygen gas to carbondioxide gas. Second, suction (as a pulling force)does not exist. Instead, the relatively greater airpressure outside the glass pushes the water upinside the glass.

Helping students understand the accepted scien-tific explanation for why the water rises, and tounderstand why the scientific explanation isaccepted instead of the more intuitively-appeal-ing explanation, is no small matter becauseacceptance requires not only understandingkinetic-molecular theory, but also knowing howto generate and test alternative hypotheses, inthis case hypotheses involving unseen theoreticalentities (i.e., atoms and molecules). Nevertheless,the best instructional approach encourages stu-dents to first explore the puzzling phenomenon,raise the causal questions, generate several possi-ble explanations, and then attempt to test themexperimentally. For example: If the water risesdue to the consumption of oxygen, and we repeatthe experiment varying the number of burningcandles, then the water should continue to rise tothe previous level (more burning candles willconsume the available oxygen faster, but will notconsume more oxygen). Alternatively, if thewater rises because the air has been heated, hasexpanded, and some has escaped out the bot-tom, increasing the number of burning candlesshould cause water to rise higher (more burningcandles will heat and drive out more air, thus fur-ther reducing the internal air pressure).

Biology teachers are often confronted by what wemight call the “special creation” misconception,which for some students can be as persistent asthe suction misconception. Dealing with the spe-cial creation misconception (or more recently the“intelligent design” misconception) can be evenmore difficult because its roots lie in an oftenemotionally-charged religious belief. For somestudents, accepting the scientific explanation forspecies diversity means rejecting part of theirdominant and guiding religious worldview.Nevertheless, I believe the teacher’s role is essen-tially the same as above, which is not to tell stu-

dents what to believe, but to help them learnhow to come to a belief. And in a science classthis means that we again propose alternativeexplanations and then test them. Fortunately,with respect to the alternative theories of evolu-tion and special creation there are several waysthis can be done (e.g., Lawson, 1999; Lawson,2004; Nelson, 2000). With respect to the fossilrecord, for example, several observations contra-dict special creation theory and support evolu-tion theory, e.g.: If special creation theory is cor-rect, and we compare fossils from theolder/lower rock layers to those fromyounger/higher layers and to present-dayspecies, then:

• Species that lived in the remote past (lowerlayers) should be similar to those livingtoday;

• The older layers should be just as likely tocontain fossils similar to present-day speciesas the younger layers;

• The simplest as well as the most complexorganisms should be found in the oldest lay-ers containing fossils, as well as in morerecent layers; and

• A comparison of fossils from layer to layershould not show gradual changes in fossilforms, in other words, intermediate formsshould not be found.

The key point in the classroom is that scienceteachers should be open to all ideas (even thosethey know to be wrong). However, the ideas,once generated, must be tested. Importantly, sci-entific beliefs are formed after consulting the evi-dence—not before. Students need to learn this,but don’t when we simply tell them which ideasare right and which are wrong.

Cardellini: You have studied instructionalapproaches to help students improve their reason-ing abilities. What is the most effective approach?

Lawson: I may have just answered this question.This is because reasoning abilities develop whenthey are used and they are certainly used whenalternative ideas are generated, tested, and con-tradicted by the evidence. Contradictions forcestudents to reflect not only on what they initiallybelieved, but also on their reasons (and reason-ing) for those beliefs. The point is that argumentsabout which ideas are right or wrong, and whythey are right or wrong, provide the motivationfor reflecting on and eventually abstracting the

ANTON E. LAWSON INTERVIEW 143

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reasoning patterns, the forms of argumentation,that are used in learning.

Cardellini: How do people acquire knowledge andsolve problems?

Lawson: Importantly, there appears to be twoways to acquire knowledge and to solve prob-lems. One way is through sheer repetitionand/or via emotionally-charged contexts.Repetition and emotion can “burn” new inputinto long-term memory. Students can memorizebiological terms, multiplication tables, and thepositions of letters on a keyboard in this “rote”way. Unfortunately, memorizing scientific termsdoes not lead to understanding and to usefulapplications. Students can also learn to solveproblems, such as those involving proportionalrelationships, in a rote way. For proportions thisoften includes use of a “cross-multiplication”algorithm:

e.g., 4/6 = 6/X, (4)(X) = (6)(6), (4)(X) = 36, X =36/4, X = 9.

In spite of the fact that students can cross multi-ply and “solve” such problems, they typically haveno idea why the algorithm works or how to solve“real” problems involving proportional relation-ships. For example, most middle and high schoolstudents can easily tell you that X = 9 in the previ-ous equation, but when given the following prob-lem, they incorrectly predict that waterwill rise to the 8th mark “… because itrose two more before, from 4 to 6, so itwill rise 2 more again, from 6 to 8.”

The Cylinders. To the right are draw-ings of a wide and a narrow cylinder.The cylinders have equally-spacedmarks on them. Water is pouredinto the wide cylinder up to the 4thmark (see A). This water rises to the6th mark when poured into the nar-row cylinder (see B). Both cylindersare emptied, and water is pouredinto the wide cylinder up to the 6thmark. How high will this water rise whenpoured into the empty narrow cylinder?

The same sorts of difficulties often emerge inbiology classes when students are told to usePunnett squares to solve genetics problems.Many students lack the combinatorial and pro-portional reasoning abilities and/or the under-standing of meiosis and Mendelian theory need-ed to know when and how to use Punnettsquares. Thus, for them the application is roteand often confused and unsuccessful.

Fortunately, there is a second way to learn. Thatway is to link new ideas with prior ideas. Thisconnectionist (or constructivist) way of learninghas several advantages, not the least of which isthat learning is not rote. Instead it connects towhat one already knows, and thus becomesmuch more useful in reasoning and problemsolving. In the case of proportions, this meansthat students not only know how to solve for X,they also know when to use a proportions strate-gy and when not to, i.e., they know when otherstrategies, such as addition and subtraction,should be used instead. The point is that if wewant students to become good scientific thinkersand good problem solvers, we cannot teach inways that lead to rote learning. Instead, we needto become connectionist teachers.

Cardellini: What is the role of analogy in scienceeducation?

Lawson: Analogy, or analogical reasoning, plays ahuge role in science; and it should play a hugerole in science education as well. In science, ana-logical reasoning is involved in the invention ofhypotheses and theories. For example, in 1890Elie Mechnikoff watched starfish larvae underhis microscope as he tossed a few rose thornsamong them. To his surprise, he noticed that thelarvae quickly surrounded and dissolved thethorns. This seemed to Mechnikoff to be analo-

gous to what happenswhen a splinter getsstuck in a finger. Pus sur-rounds the splinter,which Mechnikoff hy-pothesized consists oftiny cells that attack andeat the splinter. Sothrough the use of ana-logical reasoning, Mech-nikoff “discovered” thebodies’ main defensem e c h a n i s m — n a m e l ymobile white blood cells

that swarm around and engulf materials such assplinters and invading microbes.

Charles Darwin’s invention of natural selectioncan also be traced to an analogy—in Darwin’scase the analogy was between artificial selectionof domestic plants and animals and the selectionprocess that he imagined occurs in nature (i.e.,natural selection). Other examples of analogicalreasoning are numerous in history of science.Kepler borrowed the ellipse from Appolonios todescribe planetary orbits. Mendel borrowed alge-braic patterns to help explain hereditary


4

A

B

6



patterns. Kekulè borrowed the image of a snakebiting its tail (in a dream) to create a molecularstructure for benzene. And Coulomb borrowedNewton’s patterns of gravitational attraction todescribe the electrical forces that exist betweensub-atomic particles.

The classroom implication is that students needfreedom to explore nature in the lab and field todiscover puzzling observations. Students shouldthen be encouraged to use analogical reasoningto creatively generate multiple explanations forthe puzzling observations. To make sure thatmany ideas are freely generated, none should becriticized during this initial brainstorming peri-od. But once several plausible explanations, andperhaps some not-so-plausible explanations,have been generated, they need to be tested. Inthis way, students learn new science conceptsand theories in a way analogous to the way sci-entists initially invented them.

The key point is that most of the concepts that lieat the heart of modern scientific thought are the-oretical in the sense that they are about non-per-ceptible entities and processes (e.g., atoms, DNA,photons, biogeochemical cycles, natural selec-tion, protein synthesis). Thus for scientists tohave invented the concepts and theories in thefirst place, they had to use analogical reasoning.Likewise, students must do the same. For exam-ple, for students to get some sense of what DNAis like, we can help by suggesting that it is like(i.e., analogous to) a twisted ladder. And to helpthem understand natural selection, we can havethem participate in a simulation in which theyplay the role of birds capturing and eating mice(colored paper chips) in various habitats (piecesof colored fabric) (e.g., Stebbins & Allen, 1975;Maret & Rissing, 1998). Yet teachers need tokeep in mind that although analogies and simu-lations should be sought and used as often aspossible, their usefulness is limited by the stu-dents’ ability to understand not only how theanalogue and the theoretical target concept aresimilar, but also how they differ. After all, DNA isnot really a twisted ladder!

Cardellini: What are the greatest ideas that havebeen made available to teachers by educationalresearch?

Lawson: This will come as no surprise to experi-enced teachers; but the bottom line from educa-tional research is that you cannot teach studentsmuch, if anything, of lasting value by talking tothem. Effective teaching is not telling. Rathermeaningful learning is a “constructive” process.

Thus, the most effective approach to teaching isan “inquiry-based” approach based on the fol-lowing four basic findings of educationalresearch:

1. Learning is a natural process in which stu-dents are inherently curious and motivated tounderstand their world;

2. Students have distinctive experiences, inter-ests, beliefs, emotional states, stages of devel-opment, talents, and goals that must be takeninto account;

3. Learning occurs best when what is beinglearned is relevant and when students areactively engaged in creating new understand-ings and making new connections with priorknowledge; and

4. Learning occurs best in positive environmentsin which students’ ideas and efforts are appre-ciated and respected (Lambert & McCombs,1998).

All of this means that effective teaching takesteachers off center stage and puts student-gener-ated questions, hypotheses, tests, evidence, argu-ments and conclusions on center stage.Interestingly, a classroom observational instru-ment has been recently developed called TheReformed Teaching Observation Protocol—RTOPfor short. The RTOP contains 25 criteria for rat-ing the extent to which classrooms are inquiry-oriented and “constructivist” in nature (e.g., stu-dents made predictions, estimations, and/orhypotheses and devised means for testing them;student exploration preceded formal presenta-tion; students were reflective about their learn-ing). Research has found very high positive cor-relations between RTOP scores and studentachievement, particularly in the sciences(Adamson et al., 2003).

Cardellini: What information as teachers do weneed to know about neural theory in order to bemore effective?

Lawson: Your plumber needs to know how to stopleaks—not the molecular structure of water.Likewise teachers need to know how to help stu-dents develop intellectually and to learn—nothow their neurons work. Nevertheless, it isimportant for teachers to know that what is beingdiscovered about how brains work supportsrecent constructivist theory, which in turn sup-ports an inquiry-based approach to teaching.Having said this, there are aspects of neural the-ory that are of interest. Perhaps the most inter-esting are:


• Procedural knowledge patterns/rules residein neural networks that are hierarchical innature and culminate in single neurons locat-ed in the brain’s prefrontal cortex (Wallis,Anderson & Miller, 2001);

• Declarative knowledge resides in associativememory, which is located primarily in thehippocampus, the limbic thalamus and thebasal forebrain (Kosslyn & Keonig, 1995);

• Learning occurs when previously non-func-tional synapses become functional in one oftwo ways (Grossberg, 1982); and

• The brain is basically a hypothesis generat-ing and testing “machine.”

Let’s consider the last two points in a bit moredetail.

As mentioned when discussing knowledge acqui-sition and problem solving, there are two ways tolearn. This is because there are two ways to pro-duce functional synapses. One way is throughsheer repetition and/or via emotionally-chargedcontexts. Repetition and emotion “burn” newinput into one’s synapses (one’s long-term mem-ory) essentially by boosting pre-synaptic activityto a high-enough level to create functional con-nections. Unfortunately, this rote way of memo-rizing information produces knowledge of verylimited value because it remains disconnected towhat one already knows. The second more effec-tive way to form new functional synaptic connec-tions involves linking new input with prior ideas.When neural activity is simultaneously boostedby new input and by prior ideas, the resultingpre- and post-synaptic activities combine to cre-ate new functional connections. This second wayof learning produces useful transferable knowl-edge because the new knowledge is connected towhat one already knows.

Another significant aspect of neural theory is thatwhen the brain learns by linking new input withprior ideas, it does so in an If/and/then hypo-thetico-predictive way. Consider vision. Mostpeople would guess that the brain processesinformation, including visual input, primarily inan inductive way—that is we look and we lookagain, and perhaps look still again, until we even-tually induce an idea about what we are lookingat. But this is not how the brain works (e.g.,Kosslyn & Koenig, 1995). Instead, based on theinitial look, the brain spontaneously and subcon-sciously generates a hypothesis of what might beout there and then uses subsequent looks to testits initial hypothesis. For example, suppose



Karen, who is extremely myopic, is rootingaround the bathroom and spots the end of anobject that appears to be a shampoo tube. Inother words, the nature of the object’s end andits location prompt Karen’s brain to generate ashampoo-tube hypothesis. Based on this initialhypothesis, as well as knowledge of shampootubes stored in Karen’s associative memory,when she looks at the other end of the object,she expects to find a cap: If it really is a shampootube (hypothesis), and I look at the other end(planned test), then I should see a cap (predic-tion). Thus Karen shifts her gaze to the other end(actual test). And upon seeing the expected cap(result), she decides that the object is in fact ashampoo tube (conclusion).

The point here is that because the brain learnsbest by generating and testing hypotheses, it fol-lows that the most effective way to teach is byencouraging students to generate and testhypotheses. Of course, the hypotheses studentsgenerate and test in science classes are not of thevisual sort just discussed. Instead they are pri-marily causal in nature. Nonetheless, the hypo-thetico-predictive learning pattern remains thesame.

Cardellini: What are the great ideas of science thatevery citizen should know?

Lawson: Every citizen should know that science isa collective enterprise that seeks to explainnature based on the open generation and test ofideas. Although science does not lead to proof ordisproof, its collectiveness and openness ensurethat mistakes are corrected. Consequently, sci-ence leads to useful knowledge—in the sense thatreliable predictions about future events can bemade. With respect to specific knowledge, I willagree, in part, with Richard Feynman (1995)when he put it this way:

If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledgewere to be destroyed, and only one sentencepassed on to the next generation … it would bethe atomic hypothesis (or atomic fact, or whatev-er you want to call it) that all things are made ofatoms—little particles that move around in per-petual motion, attracting each other when theyare a little distance apart, but repelling uponbeing squeezed into one another. (p. 4)

I say in part because in my view equally impor-tant as the atomic hypothesis/fact, is the evolu-tion hypothesis/fact that all living things that wesee around us today, and those that lived in thepast, are descendants of simple bacteria-like crea-tures that came into existence some three to four

billion years ago due to natural chemical process-es that took place on a primitive Earth veryunlike the one we live in today. When this idea ofchemical and biological evolution is combinedwith the idea that the universe had its origin in amassive explosion some 12 to 15 billion yearsago, with stellar evolution, with geologicalchange, and with the idea that the universe todayconsists of countless galaxies, one begins toappreciate how unique each living thing is andhow much there still is left to learn.

ReferencesAdamson, S.L., Burtch, M., Cox III, F., Judson, E., Turley, J.B.,

Benford, R. & Lawson, A.E. (2003). Reformed undergrad-uate instruction and its subsequent impact on secondaryschool teaching practice and student achievement. Journalof Research in Science Teaching, 40(10), 939-957.

Feynman, R.P. (1995). Six Easy Pieces. Helix Books: Reading,MA.

Fuller, R.G. (2002). A Love of Discovery: Science Education—TheSecond Career of Robert Karplus. Kluwer: Dordrecht, TheNetherlands.

Grossberg, S. (1982). Studies of Mind and Brain. Dordrecht,Holland: D. Reidel.

Kosslyn, S.M. & Koenig, O. (1995). Wet Mind: The NewCognitive Neuroscience. New York: The Free Press.

Lambert, N.M. & McCombs, B.L. (1998). Learner-centeredschools and classrooms as a direction for school reform.In N.M. Lambert & B.L. McCombs (Editors), HowStudents Learn: Reforming Schools Through Learner-Centered Education. American Psychological Association:Washington, DC.

Lawson, A.E. (2000). A scientific approach to teaching aboutevolution and special creation. The American BiologyTeacher, 61(4), 266-273.

Lawson, A.E. (2004). Biology: An Inquiry Approach.Kendall/Hunt; Dubuque, IA.

Lawson, A.E., Lewis Jr., Cecil M. & Birk, James P. (1999). Whydo students “cook” lab data? A case study of the tenacityof misconceptions. The Journal of College Science Teaching,29(3), 191-198.

Maret, T.J. & Rissing, S.W. (1998). Exploring genetic drift &natural selection through a simulation activity. TheAmerican Biology Teacher, 60(9), 681-683.

Nelson, C.E. (2000). Effective strategies for teaching evolutionand other controversial topics. The Creation Controversy &The Science Classroom. NSTA Press: Arlington, VA.

Stebbins, R.C. & Allen, B. (1975). Simulating evolution. TheAmerican Biology Teacher, 37(4), 206.

Wallis, J.D., Anderson, K.C. & Miller, E.K. (2001). Single neu-rons in prefrontal cortex encode abstract rules. Nature,411, 953-956.



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Questions Biology Teachers Are Asking - An Interview With Anton e. Lawson