Biology-specific vocabulary: students’ understanding and lecturers’ expectations of student understanding

Abstract

The current A-level biology curriculum includes a broad coverage of all the biosciences which demands knowledge of a wide range of biological vocabulary. Students (n=184) from two UK universities were presented with a list of vocabulary, associated with a 'Revise Biology' text which highlighted key terms that students should know. Lecturers (n=26) were asked which of these terms they expected students to know, or be aware of. Findings revealed that students' claimed knowledge of vocabulary exceeded lecturer expectations. In addition, there were a number of terms which students did not understand and lecturers did not expect them to know, which could be removed from A-level biology courses. This is discussed in relation to whether A-level curricula need to be so content heavy and whether lecturers would benefit from knowing more about their students' knowledge of discipline-specific terms.

Do examinations prepare students for higher education? A lesson from the Covid-19 lockdown

“…Examinations are sometimes seen as a motivation for learning (Koballa and Glyn 2007) but, rather than fostering understanding, they often involve cramming many, often disjunct, items of information into short-term memory for immediate retrieval. Many of these are then forgotten by the time students reach university three months later (Jones et al 2015(Jones et al , 2019; although these publications showed scores for retained information did correlate with the examination grade awarded, even the top students had forgotten much of the learnt material. The current findings suggest that retained knowledge derives from the preceding 18 months of study (and possibly before) and is largely unaffected by the end-of-year grading process.…”

“…Consequently, students are required to learn and memorise substantial amounts of material and to focus on consolidating it for examinations. Following final school/college examinations in the summer, students fail to retain much of the absorbed information by the time they arrive at university several months later (Jones et al 2015(Jones et al , 2019. However, students in 2020 did not go through the examination process, prompting questions about the appropriateness, efficacy and value of these methods (Cairns 2020).…”

Do examinations prepare students for higher education? A lesson from the Covid-19 lockdown

“…Section 1 focused on knowledge of vocabulary with 90 terms. This was a subset of the 476 terms previously compiled (Jones et al 2019) that were originally selected from the Letts Revise Biology ( 2008) study guide. To select the 90 terms, kernel density estimation (Scott 1992) was used to create a probability density function for students' and lecturers' assessments scores.…”

“…Consequently, students are required to learn and memorise substantial amounts of material and to focus on consolidating it for examinations. Following final school/college examinations in the summer, students fail to retain much of the absorbed information by the time they arrive at university several months later (Jones et al 2015(Jones et al , 2019. However, students in 2020 did not go through the examination process, CONTACT Harriet L. Jones…”

“…The aim of the current study was to test the assumptions in the context of the 2020 student cohort's knowledge and understanding of key biological terms. First-year biology undergraduates in their first few weeks of university education were tested for biological knowledge and understanding and their results compared to a database of data from the previous year and from Jones et al (2019), when student education had not been disrupted.…”