Challenges in understanding meiosis: fostering metaconceptual awareness among university biology students

Abstract

<p>In this study, firstly, university biology students’ conceptual understanding and potential misconceptions concerning meiosis were studied. Secondly, an easily applicable drawing task was used to foster students’ metaconceptual awareness which would help them to reach conceptual change. A quasi-experimental design with a non-equivalent control group was conducted. The students (N = 82) were divided into experimental and control groups. The control groups attended traditional teaching, i.e. lectures with practicals, whilst the experimental groups had an additional activating task before practicals. In the activating task, the students drew the selected phases of meiosis and marked given concepts of meiosis in the drawing. The drawings were scored and the solutions were discussed in detail with the students. After the activating task, the traditional practicals were held for both groups. After a week, both experimental and control groups were given the same task. The results show that students in the experimental group understood meiosis significantly better than the control group, who had more misconceptions after the instruction compared to the experimental group. Thus, fostering students’ metaconceptual awareness is crucial and relatively easy to apply, also in higher education.<br /></p>