Why is asking questions an important tool in biology

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Is it computer important to people? Where do you get the red tool box on smeet? Is a volcanic rock that can be used sharpen as a cutting tool or polished as a? Does it cost money to answer questions? What Tool music contains song about numbers?

How do you set speed on sprinter? Why was a plow such important tool for farmers? Why is math an important tool in science? Study Guides. Trending Questions. What is the fourth element of the periodic table of elements? Take for example the issue of the plastic soup.

This issue can be viewed from multiple disciplinary perspectives. With each perspective, other aspects are highlighted and other questions become relevant. From a communicative perspective, for example, the question why this phenomenon is indicated by the term plastic soup can be asked and which effects this has in the communication.

From a physical geographic perspective, for example, the question where the plastic soup is located in the ocean can be asked and why right there? From an ecological perspective, the central question, among other things, is what the consequences of this pollution are for preventing and spreading species. An ethical perspective raises the question of what we should do with the plastic soup and who the stakeholders are, etcetera. For our purposes, perspectives seem the most suitable candidate for formulating domain-specific generic questions because this does not require highly detailed knowledge to come up with new questions and can also help to formulate the first start question.

In order to develop such domain-specific generic questions, we must first identify which perspectives biologists use and which of these are suitable for biology education and derive domain-specific generic questions from these perspectives. Biology studies life in all its diversity and at different organizational levels: from molecules to biosphere.

In the s, there were two leading biologists, Ernst Mayr and Nico Tinbergen, who independently tried to structure the diversity of subdisciplines that characterize biology Mayr ; Tinbergen They did this by distinguishing a number of guiding questions that a biologist can ask when studying life phenomena. These guiding questions were in turn based on perspectives.

More than 50 years later, their complementary proposals are still regarded as very valuable and directive for the investigation of life phenomena Bateson and Laland ; Burkhardt Jr ; Nesse The evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr presented in his paper Cause and Effect in Biology a simple, but influential dichotomy for questions in biology.

He made a distinction between how questions that relate to proximate causes and why questions that relate to ultimate causes. He illustrated this on the basis of biologists who wanted to investigate migratory behavior of a particular bird species. They can ask the question how this works. They then search for genetic, physiological, or ecological causes of the migratory behavior.

But they can also ask why a particular bird species migrates. Mayr emphasized that for a full understanding of a life phenomenon, both types of questions must be asked and answered.

The prominent ethologist Niko Tinbergen presented in a proposal for a set of guiding questions for biology in general and ethology behavioral theory in particular. If we want to understand this phenomenon well, we must view it from all four perspectives, according to Tinbergen.

Demand for the proximate cause of Mayr is split up by Tinbergen into questions about its operation and development. Forty years later, Mayr has in his influential This is biology: The science of the living world explicitly added three guiding questions that were implicit in his earlier work and that of Tinbergen.

In addition, he reserves a separate chapter on questions that are asked within the field of ecology. This includes the question of what an organism needs in its environment. This concise description of the structure of biology thus yields seven perspectives that biologists—often implicitly—use to formulate questions about virtually every life phenomenon, such as migration behavior or singing of birds. In this study, we examine to what extent these domain-specific generic questions can also support student teachers in developing a broad set of higher order questions for pupils on biological subjects.

The seven perspectives and associated guiding questions just discussed form the core of the set of questions for student teachers. Because biology education must not only be subject relevant but also personal and socially relevant, we have supplemented this set with perspectives that reflect the most important personal and societal applications of biology Janssen and van Berkel To explore social and personal relevance of a biological topic, the aforementioned biological perspectives were completed with the medical perspective, the technological perspective, the personal perspective, and the ethical perspective Janssen and van Berkel Janssen and de Hullu developed 11 perspectives Table 1 to help teachers generate higher order questions.

We derived domain-specific generic questions from these perspectives. For instance, from the functional perspective, we can derive the domain-specific generic question: What is its function? The formulation of domain-specific generic questions is the result of several rounds of a cyclical process of formulation, testing, reflection, and revision Janssen and de Hullu Several versions of the domain-specific generic questions have been trialled in the context of several courses for student biology teachers as well as for experienced biology teachers.

More than beginning and experienced biology teachers used the perspectives for designing and carrying out lessons in which students think productively about biological phenomena Janssen, de Boer, Dam, Westbroek and Wieringa Aside from these trials of all perspectives and domain-specific generic questions together, some perspectives like the mechanical perspective and the environmental perspective were studied separately and published Janssen, Tigelaar and Verloop , Janssen and Waarlo The 11 domain-specific generic questions Table 1 are meant to be useful for viewing numerous educational biological topics in different ways.

To illustrate this, we formulated for each perspective and domain-specific generic question at least one sample question by the subject of the human heart.

We expected that the perspectives and domain-specific generic questions would allow teachers to generate higher order questions. To analyze the quality of the generated questions, a questioning hierarchy developed and validated by Taboada and Guthrie was used. This hierarchy characterizes a wide range of question levels in a qualitative way.

Questions are described in terms of their request for information in a way that is clear for multiple users and applicable to various domains factual versus conceptual questions can be described in for instance biology, geography, and history. In this study, the perspectives and accompanying domain-specific generic questions from Table 1 were provided to biology student teachers as a cue card, to assist them while teaching during practicum in formulating higher order questions.

However, we did not provide the sample questions, because we wanted to prevent that the student teachers would simply replace the word heart with the topic we choose.

In other words, the cue card consisted of the two left columns of Table 1. Also, we aimed to determine whether or not the perspectives used when generating questions showed a larger variety when the cue card was used. Does the number of generated questions about biological topics increase when student teachers make use of the cue card compared with not using the cue card?

Are there more higher order questions formulated when student teachers make use of the cue card compared with not using the cue card? Do the perspectives used while generating questions show a larger variety when student teachers make use of the cue card compared with not using the cue card?

Fifteen student biology teachers enrolled in this study. This was the entire cohort of student biology teachers following a 1-year post graduate preservice teacher education program 60 European Credit Transfer System credits in a Dutch university. Fifty percent 30 ECTS of the program was committed to internships in schools. The methods course 7 ECTS they followed was a compulsory part of the curriculum of the teacher education program.

They had previously obtained a MSc degree in biology. The participants spent 1 day a week at the university and taught an average of seven biology classes in secondary schools on the remaining days. At the time of data collection, the student teachers had approximately 6-months teaching while during practicum experience.

They were not familiar with the perspectives. With this study, we wanted to examine to what extent quantity and quality of generated questions by student teachers increase if they use the cue card.

Given the explorative nature of the study, we applied a one-group pretest-posttest design Allen With the pretest, a baseline for participant performance without cue card could be established. The cue card was then introduced, and student teachers generated questions with the cue card. The final step was to compare the numbers and quality of the generated questions without and with cue card.

During a methods course session, the student teachers were given two different standards from the national syllabus for biology on a particular biological topic; these were similar in difficulty, structure, and length, but had different content Table 2. The standards are taught in the exam year and are part of the same chapter of the used biology book, showing the relationship between the standards.

Chosen topics are common knowledge for the student teachers as the function of the nerves and the muscles is part of their biology study. We chose two different standards because we wanted to avoid that a learning effect would occur after the formulation of questions about the first standard.

By using another standard the second time, this was avoided. First, the student teachers were given the assignment to individually generate as many questions as possible that they might ask in class about the first standard, without using the cue card.

They had to write these questions on paper, within a time limit of 15 min. The paper was handed in afterwards. Next, the cue card was briefly introduced by their biology educator with an example for each domain-specific generic question with a salamander as an example. It was showed how questions about a salamander could be generated with the help of the cue card.

This was done for all perspectives. This took less than 10 min. After this, each student teacher got his own cue card. They had to write as many questions as possible individually about the second standard on paper, again within a time limit of 15 min. This way, we collected the data on the quantity and quality of the generated questions and the perspectives used without and with the cue card.

The question was asked directly after the second assignment and took about 10 min. To determine the number of questions generated, the questions composed using and without using the cue card were counted in total and per student teacher. A paired-samples t test was conducted to compare the numbers of questions generated per student teacher using and without using the cue card. To determine the quality of the generated questions, the first author and an independent researcher both biologists coded the generated questions per student teacher into one of the four levels of the questioning hierarchy from Taboada and Guthrie , which are described below.

This was done separately for both conditions. An interrater reliability analysis using the kappa statistic was performed to determine consistency among raters Viera and Garrett After several trials, Taboada and Guthrie constructed four levels of questions, starting with level 1. Questions of the highest level, level 4, are different from the other three levels because they constitute a request for principled understanding, with evidence for complex interactions among multiple concepts.

Interactions between two or more concepts are central to the requests for information. Taboada and Guthrie put questions which could not be categorized into level 0. In summary, the progression from level 1 to level 4 questions is based on the complexity of the question as expressed in requests for knowledge, with level 1 questions requesting factual knowledge and levels 2 to 4 asking about conceptual knowledge with increasing degrees of specificity and complexity within the question.

Therefore, level 2 to 4 questions could be considered as higher order questions, because they aim to help students to construct conceptual knowledge, which as a result may stimulate productive thinking. We categorized the generated questions into the four levels; however, there were a number of questions that were more difficult to come to an agreement. Two types of questions led to discussion: whether prior knowledge was required to answer the question or not and when a question consisted of two parts of different levels.

Both types of questions are discussed below. With several questions, there was discussion about whether prior knowledge was needed to answer the question or not. Per question of this type, it was determined if prior knowledge was needed to answer the question. Can this be taken care of by transplanting other muscle tissue, for example, from the intestine? On the other hand, students need prior knowledge of multiple concepts transplantation as well as the different types of muscle tissue in order to answer the question properly, making it a level 4 question.

In this case, we decided prior knowledge was needed to answer the question, and therefore, we assigned this question as a level 4 question. For a number of other questions, there was a difference in categorizing between both raters because the question consisted of two parts, the first part of the question being of a different level than the second part. For each question of this type, the leading level of the question was determined and this level was assigned to that question.

The above question was assigned as a level 2 question. Give a drawing with all organelles and indicate the function. This question was assigned as a level 3 question. For the questions generated without using the cue card as well for those generated using it, the levels of the questions were expressed in absolute numbers and as a percentage of the total number of questions generated using or without using the cue card.

These data are displayed in Table 4. To categorize the generated questions into the appropriate perspectives, the first author and an independent researcher used the cue card and Table 3 to identify the used perspectives and assigned all questions to the corresponding perspective, because student teachers did not write which perspective they chose per generated question.

Questions from level 0 were not classified. In Table 3 , we show a description of each perspective and examples of domain-specific generic questions belonging to a specific perspective. The main question italicized comes from the cue card complemented with example questions which contain keywords that we have italicized because they often come back in questions that belong to that certain perspective.

For example, the keywords compare and difference belong to the comparison perspective, whereas the keyword function belongs to the functional perspective and the keyword evolution belongs to the evolution perspective.

To analyze the generated questions into the right perspectives, the first author and the independent researcher have made a list of all the generated questions and categorized them independently. For each question, it was first looked whether this question contained a keyword from Table 3. If this was the case, the question was categorized into that perspective.

If this was not the case, it was examined whether the question resembled one of the examples of domain-specific generic questions also from Table 3. The question then was assigned into the corresponding perspective. Some generated questions were more difficult to categorize because they contained two perspectives at once. If this was the case, both researchers determined what the leading perspective was and categorized the question into this perspective.

However, in this case, the question is about what happens when a system does not function in its normal state, which is the case with the disease of multiple sclerosis. We therefore chose to categorize this question as one from the diagnostic perspective. She volunteered to read aloud when the teacher asked for volunteers. She gave correct answers to questions asked by the teacher.

In addition, she was aware of differences between what the teacher said and what was described in the textbook, and commented on them. It was obvious that her peers considered her a very intelligent person.

M also tried to explain a question to the teacher that another class member had asked and that the teacher had not understood. During this lesson, there is only one episode in which M asked the teacher questions:. Teacher: It received it, something changed there, and as a result protein molecules inside the cell change.

In this episode, M's questions are characteristic properties-type questions. They deal with only one variable the change in the shape of the receptor , and as soon as M receives the teacher's answer the lesson continues.

This episode is similar to other episodes of questions posed by other students in the class during this lesson, in which the questions were of the properties category, and as soon as the answer was given by the teacher the lesson continued.

In this lesson, the teacher and the students went through the methods and the results of the research article they had just been reading which was modified from Riddle et al. The teacher conducted a lesson based on guiding questions meant to help the students make sense of what they had read: organize the knowledge they obtained from the article, monitor their understanding, help them connect the paper to other topics in biology, etc.

The teacher usually asked the question and discussed it with the whole class. Sometimes she asked the students to answer the questions in groups, sometimes by themselves, but then she always conducted whole-class discussions of the answers. It should be emphasized that during the lesson, the teacher did not explicitly encourage the students to ask questions.

At times her reactions even unconsciously discouraged students to ask questions for example, ignoring students' questions. That the So, it cannot influence the chicken. It cannot spread. A change was also evident in M's comments and questions during this lesson. M kept asking questions about the methods and the results described in the article. Why not transplant it in the leg, or in the head? Every organ in the body has polarity! During this lesson, M continuously criticized the way in which the research had been done and offered her own ways to conduct the experiments.

The following episode illustrates this. M: Can't you just infect cells that [already] have that gene, instead of like Teacher: What you would like is This means that in cells that normally have this gene, because all chick cells have that gene like you saw in the article, there is a certain stage in which the gene is expressed and certain stages in which it isn't. Teacher: So with genetic engineering methods we transfer the DNA in such a way that there will be a high quantity of the gene, and also that it will be expressed.

Teacher: These are already details that you are not supposed to get into, but you transfer it with a very strong promoter to which the RNA polymerase binds strongly, so you will have transcription anyway. This episode shows that M wants to understand the heart of the matter and she keeps asking until she does. Her questions indicate that she does not take things for granted, consistent with her learning behavior during the first lesson. The episode is also much longer than the typical episodes from the first lesson.

During this lesson, there are four similar episodes including the episode above in which M expresses her skepticism and offers other ways to conduct the experiments. In these episodes, M's conversations with the teacher are long, and she poses questions of the third category, mainly questions expressing criticism, as well as questions of the properties category. These episodes lead M and the teacher to talk about the methods used in the experiments and the need to conduct manipulative research but, nevertheless, to conclude about normal development.

Question-asking is an important skill for both scientific research and meaningful learning. The acquisition of the question-asking skill is gradual: Students do not spontaneously pose questions reflecting a high level of thinking Dillon, b.

In order to do so, they need either a stimulus or training Dillon, b. The new learning material that we developed may be one of the ways to stimulate question-asking at high thinking levels among high-school students. This is indicated by the data given here: During and after the reading of research papers, and without specific training, students sometimes even spontaneously started asking questions of high thinking levels, which dealt with causal relationships between variables and with criticism.

In addition, students tended to ask more unique questions and fewer similar ones. This may indicate the more diverse directions of thinking that arise after reading research papers. A possible reason for these phenomena is the nature of research papers in which the reader, in our case high-school students, is exposed to the whole procedure of the research the research question, the methods, the rationale of the experiments.

In contrast, textbooks, which are the common learning material in high-school biology classrooms, usually either explain experiments without detailing the research methods or simply bring only the results of the research or even only the conclusions, without explaining how they were obtained.

We believe that students who learn through textbooks do not usually question the data they obtain from those books or during the lessons. In contrast, students who are exposed to research papers start to grasp the way in which the research was conducted and how the conclusions were obtained.

Since they are not familiar with the methods of the research, they tend to ask more about its details and, like M, may begin to criticize the way in which the research was conducted. After they understand better, students start to use the research methods they have learned to phrase new research questions, which deal with causal relationships.

The combination of research methods procedural knowledge and theoretical background declarative knowledge allows a variety of possibilities and combinations in formulating research questions and, therefore, results in an increase in unique questions. It may be postulated that the change in the type of questions posed by students that learn through research papers is simply due to the extra learning time that has elapsed between studying the introduction to the curriculum T2 and studying the research papers T3 and the acquisition of new knowledge during this period.

In this view, the change in the questions generated by the students merely reflect different stages in their learning Watts et al. We believe this not to be the case for three main reasons. It should be noted that the pattern of the type of questions in this group at T2 was similar to the pattern at T2 for the students who had learned through research articles.

This may indicate that the ability to ask certain types of questions was similar in both groups. Studying a research article does not add substantial declarative knowledge, as it can be summarized by the students in a single sentence Yarden et al. Its contribution seems, rather, to be to the development of the students' acquaintance with the rationale of the research, the research question, and the scientific methods.

It should be noted that the change we observed in the type of questions posed by students who learned through research articles from our curriculum was a nominally moderate change from 3 questions in the causal relationships category at T1 and T2 to 11 at T3; see also Table 1.

This moderate change could be due to the fact that asking questions requires not only a stimulating curriculum, but also a combination of factors that may contribute to a substantial increase in causal relationship-type questions. Those factors might be the teachers' reactions to students' questions Dillon, b , the students' reaction to peers' questions, or the students' knowledge about different levels of questions.

Therefore, the teaching approach to learning through research articles should also contribute to the students' ability to ask causal relationship-type questions, but the teachers who participated in this research did not change any of their previous teaching approaches while using the research papers.

In our current attempts to develop new methods of teaching through research articles, we try to create a supportive environment for students' questions during the lesson, and indeed in such an environment, we have noticed that students tend to ask higher—thinking level questions data not shown.

We therefore believe that the moderate change in the type of questions that we observed while students learned through research articles should be regarded as an initiation of developing the ability to ask higher level-questions and, together with the other factors mentioned above, can influence this thinking skill.

This trend can be explained by the time that passed from T1 to T2 and then to T3, which was rather short for some classes only a week; for other classes, 2 or 3 weeks. Repeating the task of asking questions in such a short time, especially when the students are not used to question-asking, can be quite tedious and may result in some reluctance to cooperate. Some of the teachers explicitly requested a certain number of questions on one occasion but not on others, and different teachers gave different times on task.

In addition, for technical reasons, the composition of the students in a class changed from time to time. The reasons were variable for example, illness, special activities at school, matriculation examinations for some of the students.

Therefore, the students that composed a class at T1 were not necessarily the same students at T2 and T3. These considerations, as well as others see Categories of Questions According to the Order of Information, under Methods , led us to regard the students as a community of learners and to analyze the quality of the questions rather than their quantity.

The change we observed in the type of questions that students asked was not due to any intentional act of teaching. Teachers were provided with the same type of guiding questions for both the introduction to the curriculum and the research papers.

In addition, teachers who taught the curriculum were not informed of our research question and were not instructed to teach any differently than they normally would.

M's teacher, for example, did not use the questions asked by M as a stimulus for class discussion, resulting in a discourse between only the teacher and the student. Nevertheless, since teachers are not used to conducting text-based science lessons, we expected that using a curriculum based on research articles might in and of itself change their teaching approach and influence the type of questions the students asked.

To our disappointment, this did not happen. We were present at all lessons that were conducted in all the classes that participated in this research, and although we did not perform a detailed follow-up of the lessons, as was done in student M's class, we did not observe any major changes in the teaching approaches of the teachers. Lessons were still conducted as a Socratic dialogue, with the teachers expecting the students to find the answers to the teachers' questions in the text.

Therefore, we are now trying to implement the curriculum with appropriate teaching approaches, which will hopefully further allow and stimulate the question-asking abilities of the students and help them answer their own questions, if possible, using the text of the research article, as well as encourage active learning through the text Yarden et al.

In the course of studying the new learning material in developmental biology, we could discern three stages, which were accompanied by a typical level of questions posed by the students. Information-gathering: At this stage, students lack basic knowledge of the subject matter. Therefore, their questions are of the lowest thinking level of the knowledge category according to the taxonomy of Bloom et al.