Biology: A Community Context [ハードカバー]

Please see my review of the hardback edition of this book under the title

"Biology: A Community Context Student Edition (Hardback)". The c. date of the edition I read is 2003. It requires a series of videos separate from the book. I do not know if the paperback edition also requires them.

For some time now, science education in the United States has been identified to be in crisis. Students too often see science classes as dull and nearly one half of students feel that what they learn in science classes is useless outside of school. "Biology: A Community Context", is a refreshing attempt to bring those students back. Compared to other introductory high school biology courses, "Biology" is far more appropriate for the vast majority of students. The book was developed with the following assumptions: (1) depth of understanding must replace coverage of isolated facts; (2) inquiry skills applicable to both societal and career success are essential; (3) ecology, evolution, and genetics are the fundamental ideas in biology; (4) active learning (hands-on/minds-on) must make up approximately 75% of the curriculum; (5) the most pressing problems students will face throughout their lives are rooted in overpopulation and the deterioration of the environment; and (6) the curriculum must be seen by teachers and students as doable. Each of the eight units in the text incorporates a unique instructional strategy that carefully considers current research on teaching, learning, and cognitive development. Overtly inquiry oriented, the instructional strategy will certainly help teachers improve students' attitude toward science, understanding of biology concepts, and science as inquiry. The instructional strategy has students actively formulating questions, observing, speculating, controlling and manipulating variables, collecting and organizing data, drawing conclusions, and applying their knowledge in various ways. Since many biology teachers feel they do not have the expertise or time to sustain an inquiry-oriented biology program, the instructional strategy is an overt attempt to help biology teachers implement active student inquiry. I had the opportunity to use "Biology: A Community Context" when I taught high school biology. While initially tentative, my students soon seized the opportunity to pursue their own research questions. I particularly remember the first unit which introduces energy and matter concepts in the context of society's waste disposal problems. Two students in my class were far more interested in automobile mechanics than biology and were skeptical of claims that used motor oil is deleterious to the environment. Hence, they proposed to use organic matter from our classroom compost pile to test the effects of used motor oil on the organisms that were teeming in the compost. How to set up the test was the problem they faced. Employing the personal compost columns built in an activity that occurred earlier in the unit, they decided to place equivalent amounts of compost in a control column and a test column. Using the knowledge they learned earlier in the unit, in both columns the two students maintained the conditions necessary for the micro-organisms living in the compost that do the decomposing. The only difference was that the test column also received a dose of used motor oil. Before adding motor oil, the students sampled both columns for the type and number of micro-organisms. Knowing that a well running compost creates heat, the students also took both compost columns' temperature and found them to be the same and well above room temperature. Two weeks after beginning the experiment, the differences between the two columns was striking! The control column was as it was before-well above room temperature and swarming with micro-organisms. The test column, however, was at room temperature, and the two students found little evidence of living micro-organisms. All this occurred while other groups of two conducted their own research projects that played off the first unit's theme. In the presentations that followed, these two students confidently provided the evidence they had gathered and urged their fellow students to return used motor oil to recycling centers rather than pouring it on the ground. If these sorts of experiences are what you wish to see in your biology or life science classroom, then "Biology: A Community Context" is the textbook you have been looking for.