Recontextualiseren van het concept biodiversiteit: Het ontwikkelen van een onderwijsleerstrategie voor het recontextualiseren van het concept biodiversiteit in de bovenbouw biologie havo en vwo

Abstract

This thesis reports on a design-research study on the development of a teaching-and-learning strategy for the flexible use of the concept of biodiversity in new contexts in upper secondary biology education. The notions of ‘concept’, ‘context’ and ‘flexible use of a concept’ by ‘recontextualising’ the concept are rooted in cultural-historical activity theory. Recontextualising is to reconsider the meaning of a concept in a context that differs from the one in which its meaning was learned. A concept’s meaning may be revised or expanded in the new context. A cultural-historical perspective on learning underlies the concept-context approach, underpinning the new national examination program for upper secondary biology education (2013). The concept-context approach considers recontextualisation a promising solution for the problem of knowledge transfer, i.e. teaching and learning knowledge so that it results in flexible knowledge, that students can easily apply in new contexts. Biodiversity is a key concept in the recently revised Dutch biology curriculum. It also bears social relevance, because of its symbolic meaning as ‘Life on Earth’ in international nature policy. The use of the concept of biodiversity was analysed, identifying three conceptual cores: ‘nature’, ‘natural source’ and ‘index’. A working definition of the concept of biodiversity as ‘index’ was developed. Biodiversity =def the number of species and the number of individual organisms of each species in a particular area, in a particular time interval or period. Students learn to recontextualise the concept of biodiversity as ‘index’. Attention is paid to the teachers’ scaffolding task, while allowing students to gain ownership of their version of the working definition. The first case study resulted in major adjustments of the strategy, in line with the cyclical nature of design-research. The evaluation of the second version of the strategy shows evidence of recontextualising the concept of biodiversity in student dialogues and test results. A reasonable 50% of the students recontextualised all components of the working definition. A fair 90% of the students recontextualised at least three. The results of the third case study equalled the second case study outcomes. The study results in a feasible and effective teaching-and-learning strategy for the flexible use of the concept of biodiversity in new contexts in upper secondary biology education. The results include the following elements: Conceptual analysis: exploring different meanings of the concept of biodiversity. Working definition: structuring and distinguishing components of the meaning of the concept of biodiversity. Contextual transposition: deriving teaching-and-learning contexts from professional and scientific practices. Contextual changes: developing a sequence of teaching-and-learning activities for motivating conceptual adaptations of the concept of biodiversity. Metacognition: stimulating students to reflect on the development of the concept of biodiversity during the series of lessons. By analogical argumentation the generalizability of the teaching-and-learning strategy aimed at recontextualising the concept of biodiversity is explored for other ambiguous and context-dependent biological concepts. Finally, some possible consequences of the proposed teaching-and-learning strategy for the flexible use of biological concepts and suggestions for further research are discussed.