Four lessons for teaching diffusion to my Year 10 Biology students. I designed some simple models to match the deep concepts. Students really struggle with the idea of a concentration "gradient" as a cause of diffusion.
#SciTeachUK #SystemsTeaching
My favourite model this week has been:
IB Biology: Translocation
It took us two lessons to co-construct it, step by step, viewing the parts in images, comparing with transpiration, and thinking through the causes. The key is that we bring forth the concept together in conversing.
#SystemsTeaching
Really happy with how my transpiration model came out today with my IB bio students. Adding concrete elements, such as the lead in the background, tends to help students locate aspects.
#SciTeachUK #SystemsTeaching
This is an fantastic post, and an excellent application of Ashby's law of requisite variety (from systems theory).
#SystemsTeaching
Current mood—we need to advance towards 2⃣.
1⃣ Students as information processors. Teachers as info givers. Schools as optimisation centers.
2⃣ Students as autonomous organisms. Teachers as prompters to perceive & act on info. Schools as developmental systems.
#EduSky #UKEd #SystemsTeaching
Feedback from a systems view:
We teachers don't give feedback—like giving a parcel of knowledge.
Instead we are part of the feedback loop—we adapt to students as much as they adapt to us.
It's continuous interaction, a sort of coevolution—a coupling—between parties.
#Edusky #UKEd #SystemsTeaching
I've been designing models again. Here's one I like for natural selection. A good one, I think for 16-18 year olds, but maybe also 14-16. #SystemsTeaching #iTeachBio
I've been working on a model for teaching the adaptive immune system to my 14-16 year olds (IGCSE Biology). What do you think? #SystemsTeaching #iTeachBio
Teaching fossil fuels to Y7 this week—contrasting stability and change.
Plus the difference between availability of energy from fossil fuels (stock dependent) and light (rate dependent). Diagram got too cramped in top right (noted for next time).
#SystemsTeaching
For von Foerster (2014) there's no "selective pressure," it's "diversity & death".
"The greater the diversity, the greater the possibility of adapting ... Conversely, death is an important process through which systems, ensembles, fall back out of this diversity."
#SystemsTeaching #iTeachBio
I started the digestive system today with my 14-year-olds. We contrasted ways of digesting, before seeing that the fundamental process was the same. Then transitioned to seeing the human system in the concrete to the abstract. #SystemsTeaching #VariationTheory #EduSky #UKEd
An image of the book cover. Title: Difference Maker: Enacting Systems Theory in Biology Teaching.
Coming autumn 2024
🟢A fresh look at learning, understanding, cognition and communication according to systems theory.
🟢How systems theory & variation theory are entwined. Exactly how I enact the ideas.
🟢An appendix of over 40 diagrams and how I've taught them.
#EduSky #SystemsTeaching
"Scientific knowledge is not the exhibition of the nature of reality as it is in itself; it is an expression of the relation between our embodied cognition and the world that it purports to know"
Evan Thompson 2016
#SystemsTeaching #EduSky
I've been working on a model for teaching transpiration to students aged 16-18. Here's where I've got so far:
#SystemsTeaching #iTeachBio
*Update*
First draft complete of:
"Difference Maker: Enacting Systems Theory in Biology Teaching"
With (currently) an appendix of over 40 stock and flow models that I've designed, and exactly how I've used them in the classroom.
#SystemsTeaching #iTeachBio #UKEd
I'm going to be teaching Hardy-Weinberg soon, so I wondered if it could be modelled with a stock and flow diagram. I worked out that I could at least model the assumptions. I plan to use it to introduce the concept.
#SystemsTeaching #iTeachBio
Teaching then, must involve provoking students to perceive new things, and then checking, through dialogue, that their meaning is compatible with ours.
#VariationTheory #SystemsTeaching
Meaning can't be passed to people like stuff in a parcel. Information can't enter a student's brain, be processed, & stored as is. Instead, when students perceive something new, they must make sense of it with reference to their own (inaccessible) network of understandings.
#SystemsTeaching #EduSKy
PKU (Phenyketonuria) is back on the IB Bio syllabusto exemplify a monogenic disorder.
A great example of the triumph over genetic determinism—change the diet, avoid the disorder despite the genotype. I built this model on the fly today, it did the job well:
#SystemsTeaching #iTeachBio
I've been thinking of a model to show the feedback control of the iris. Here's a draft I made:
#SystemsTeaching #iTeachBio
I was teaching my Y7s about cells in the respiratory system yesterday. And we ended up building an impromptu stock and flow model. #SystemsTeaching #iTeachBio #UKEd
Sometimes I've observed that when subject knowledge of biology is lower, there is a tendency to focus on detailed description of a system—opening black boxes and mapping contents.
Rather than having students grapple with how it performs in varying conditions.
#SystemsTeaching #iTeachBio
Still digging deep into meaning making with Year 7.
Today was all about how systems come together to fend off structural entropy:
#SystemsTeaching #iTeachBio
Teaching the cell to my Y7s. One thing, often overlooked, is the major role of the membrane. The membrane is the distinction maker between organism & environment. By controlling what goes in and out, it shapes the cell's identity. #SystemsTeaching
Science comes from the Indo-European "ski"—to separate, to draw distinctions.
System comes from the Indo-European "sym"—to integrate, to bring together.
They complement each other, something systemicists strive for.
Heinz von Foerster
#SystemsTeaching #EduSky #UKEd
"Language is pickled epistemology"
Gregory Bateson, implying that we inherit a bunch of assumptions about the world embedded in our maternal language.
#EduSky #UKEd #SystemsTeaching
“The Laws of Nature are written by man. The laws of biology must write themselves.”
Heinz von Foerster
#SystemsTeaching
"Paradigms don’t shift. People shift; humans change, but paradigms don’t change. They’ve got no idea how to change. Paradigm shift is a misformulation. Once more attention shifts to the paradigm rather than to the person who’s talking about it."
von Foerster 2014
#EduSky #UKEd #SystemsTeaching
Biology courses can sometimes get stuck in the structure-and-function cycle.
This involves marching through descriptive accounts of systems.
But rarely delving into how systems actually perform as a whole.
Biology is about both parts and wholes.
#SystemsTeaching #iTeachBio
