Model-Based Inquiry in Biology: Three-Dimensional Instructional Units for Grades 9-12

You shouldn’t have to scavenge for high-quality curriculum materials that both center around real-world phenomena and align with A Framework for K-12 Science Education and the Next Generation Science Standards. And now you don’t have to--thanks to Model-Based Inquiry in Biology: Three-Dimensional Instructional Units for Grades 9-12. This book will help you engage your biology students in constructing, critiquing, revising, and testing models to explain how things happen in the world. The book is divided into two parts: Section 1 introduces model-based inquiry (MBI) and the ideas that frame it. Section 2 contains four complete MBI biology units. All come with the background, examples, and guidance you need to lead students to their final evidence-based explanations of the phenomena that anchor each unit. The units cover four areas: molecules and organisms, ecosystems, heredity, and biological evolution. The curriculum builds strategically from unit to unit and integrates disciplinary core ideas, crosscutting concepts, and science and engineering practices. The authors--experts in model-based teaching and learning--tested each unit in actual classrooms. They make it clear that by using modeling to explain events, you can shift the emphasis of your biology lessons away from ＂we need to learn about this topic in order to do well in class＂ to ＂we need to figure out why or how something happens.＂ Model-Based Inquiry in Biology will help you to create meaningful learning experiences for your students as they strive to make sense of the world around them.

Ron Gray is an associate professor of science education in the Department of STEM Education and co-director of the Center for Science Teaching and Learning at Northern Arizona University. His work focuses on providing secondary science teachers the tools to design and implement learning experiences for their students that are effective and authentic to the discipline. Much of this work has been centered on model-based inquiry and the integration of scientific practices in a supportive and structured way. He is also interested in the history of science and science studies which, taken together, help to provide a background for understanding what ＂authentic＂ scientific practice in the K-12 context might look like. Framing this work are the ideas of practice-based teacher education and ambitious science teaching. In addition to his research and work with science teachers, Ron is interested in conservation education. While a middle school science teacher, he worked in the summer as the education coordinator of the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia. That experience led to work with other international conservation organizations and, more recently, with Earth Expeditions. Through Earth Expeditions he has facilitated field courses in conservation hot spots around the world including Namibia, Trinidad and Tobago, and, most recently, Malaysian Borneo. Before coming to NAU he coordinated a graduate licensure program in mathematics and science education at Oregon State University where he received my doctorate in science education in 2009. Previously, he was a middle school science teacher in Salem, Oregon, and in South Central Los Angeles. Before he became a teacher he conducted research in pharmacology at Oregon Health Sciences University, immunology at the Scripps Research Institute, and ecology in the Chiricahua National Monument of southern Arizona.