Developing the ability to recontextualise cellular respiration: an explorative study in recontextualising biological concepts

ABSTRACT

In many science education practices, students are expected to develop an understanding of scientific knowledge without being allowed a view of the practices and cultures that have developed and use this knowledge. Therefore, students should be allowed to develop scientific concepts in relation to the contexts in which those concepts are used. Since many concepts are used in a variety of contexts, students need to be able to recontextualise and transfer their understanding of a concept from one context to another. This study aims to develop a learning and teaching strategy for recontextualising cellular respiration. This article focuses on students’ ability to recontextualise cellular respiration. The strategy allowed students to develop their understanding of cellular respiration by exploring its use and meaning in different contexts. A pre- and post-test design was used to test students’ understanding of cellular respiration. The results indicate that while students did develop an acceptable understanding of cellular respiration, they still had difficulty with recontextualising the concept to other contexts. Possible explanations for this ack of understanding are students’ familiarity with the biological object of focus in a context, the manner in which this object is used in a context and students’ understanding of specific elements of cellular respiration during the lessons. Although students did develop an adequate understanding of the concept, they do need more opportunities to practice recontextualising the concept in different contexts. Further research should focus on improving the strategy presented here and developing strategies for other core concepts in science.

KEYWORDS:

• Biology education
• conceptual development
• context-based learning
• recontextualising

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Bert van Oers http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9371-9126

Notes

1 The terms ‘upper general secondary education’ and ‘pre-university education’ reflect different levels of education in the Dutch secondary school system where students are separated according to their cognitive level after year 6 (student-age 11–12) of compulsory education. Upper general education can best be compared with years 10 and 11 (student age 16–17) of compulsory education in other countries, while pre-university education can be compared with years 10, 11 and 12 (student age 16–18).

2 This is not entirely accurate since some bacteria are able to respire aerobically without mitochondria. In fact, the widely accepted theory of endosymbiosis requires the existence of such bacteria before they were incorporated as mitochondria.

3 In order to preserve the privacy of the students in this study, the names used here are aliases.