The pandemic continues to exert its impact across the world.
In the United Kingdom, the numbers of hospital patients with Covid-19 are, at the time of writing, identical to those in the first wave of the pandemic over two years ago. The difference between those admitted now, and then, lies in their vaccination status, with the majority of patients who are currently seriously ill being those who have decided against vaccination. In the United Kingdom, there is an extensive vaccination programme, but that is by no means true in every country of the world. With new variants of Covid-19 emerging on a regular basis, it is essential that wealthier countries support global vaccination programmes to help limit the extent to which new variants are given opportunities to thrive.
When people make decisions about their health and about vaccination, it is important for them to have knowledge and understanding. Simply in terms of school biology, we are asking people to remember what they learnt about disease transmission, the immune system, vaccination, mRNA translation, protein synthesis, and the breathing system, amongst many other topics. In terms of school mathematics, we expect them to make sense of graphs, to understand probability and modelling, and to undertake complex assessments of relative risk. As biology educators, we are expert in teaching these ideas at school (and of course at University level). But biology education varies across the world, and memories fade. As a result, many seek information from the Internet and social media, the veracity of which can often be very poor, and sometimes deliberately misleading.
Given the above, it seems more important than ever that policy makers, globally, invest more in biological education outside formal contexts, and in particular in adult education. The Aims and Scope of this journal have been revised during the pandemic, to identify the informal sector as one additional area in which biology educators are active. The Editorial Board has also been expanded, with biological education related to health now being more strongly represented. During the pandemic, submission rates to the journal have expanded substantially, from across the world. Our expanded Editorial Board also now reflects better our global community of biology educators, and we have revised our submission types to help attract manuscript submissions from across that community.
The revised Aims and Scope describes the journal as providing a forum where the latest advances in research into teaching, learning and assessment of biology can contribute to policy and practice in biological education for all ages. Given the global challenges we face, including the pandemic, climate change, and threats to food supply, it seems clear that such a forum is more important than ever before.