A STUDY OF CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDINGS OF CONCRETE AND FORMAL BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE CONCEPTS AS RELATED TO STAGE OF INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT AND BACKGROUND VARIABLES (HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS).

摘要

The primary goal of this study was to determine if the cognitive demand considered necessary for the solution of a biology problem (concrete or formal) was related to student understandings of biological science concepts. Two subproblems were (1) to determine the relationship between the students' comprehension of biological science concepts as indicated by grade in biology, Science Research Associates (SRA), science score, and SRA biology subscore, and the students' conceptual understandings and misunderstandings of biological science concepts and (2) to determine the possible relationships, if any, of gender, chronological age, SRA science score, SRA biology subscore, and level of intellectual development to an individual's conceptual understandings and misunderstandings of the eight biological science concepts.;Results included different sets of discriminators for the level of conceptual understanding for the concrete and formal biology concepts. Significant correlations were found between both the formal and concrete concepts and all background variables, with the exception of age, for both classifications of concepts, and with the exception of gender for the formal concepts. All measurements of comprehension showed significant correlations with concrete and formal concept understandings.;Conceptual understandings of biology concepts appear to be best predicted by the students' comprehension of biological science concepts, suggesting that the instrument used to measure conceptual understanding functioned as an achievement measure, not influenced by, and without an underlying construct based upon cognitive demand.;The sample consisted of eleventh grade students (N = 77) enrolled in English classes in a suburban city in the Midwest in which a major university is located.