Findings demonstrated that active learning decreased failure rates by 55% and increased student examination performance by approximately half a standard deviation. For example, a landmark meta-analysis compared student achievement and failure rates between undergraduate science, engineering, and mathematics classes that used active-learning approaches and those that used lecture ( Freeman et al., 2014). While this body of work is critical to our understanding of active learning, the ways in which practitioners and researchers currently use the term are often vague.ĭespite this ambiguity, research concerning the effectiveness of active learning in the classroom has continued. Subsequently, others expanded on and institutionalized terms such as “student-centered” and “evidence-based” practices ( Piaget, 1932 Montessori, 1946 Vygotsky, 1987 Papert, 1980 Brown et al., 1989 Turkle and Papert, 1990 Ackermann, 2001, Cook et al., 2012). (2015) identified Dewey as one of the earliest and most influential advocates of what we now know as active learning. It is an active, personally conducted affair” (p. Specifically, Dewey (1916) wrote, “Learning means something which the individual does when he studies. Another call to action came from the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (2012), who proposed five recommendations to change undergraduate STEM education, including the adoption of “evidence-based teaching practices.”Īlthough these pushes for “student-centered” and “evidence-based” practices are relatively recent, they stem from ideologies that are more than a century old. For example, after extensive discussions among biology faculty, students, and administrators, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2009) published a formative document, Vision and Change: A Call to Action, which advocated for “student-centered classrooms” and outlined six core competencies intended to guide undergraduate biology education: 1) apply the process of science 2) use quantitative reasoning 3) use modeling and simulation 4) tap into the interdisciplinary nature of science 5) communicate and collaborate with other disciplines and 6) understand the relationship between science and society. To meet these objectives, calls to action formalized priorities and made specific recommendations aimed at improving undergraduate biology education nationwide. The promotion of undergraduate biology knowledge in the United States has immediate and long-term implications for increasing national science literacy, providing high-quality education to the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce, and contributing to critical scientific advances. These tools can help the community define, elaborate, and provide specificity when using the term active learning to characterize teaching practices. Based on data from the BER literature and community, we provide a working definition of active learning and an Active-Learning Strategy Guide that defines 300+ active-learning strategies. We categorized the available active-learning definitions and strategies obtained from the articles and survey responses to highlight central themes. Findings showed the majority of the literature concerning active learning never defined the term, but the authors often provided examples of specific active-learning strategies. Our objectives were to increase transparency and reproducibility of teaching practices and research findings in biology education. To clarify this term, we explored how active learning is defined in the biology education literature ( n = 148 articles) and community by surveying a national sample of biology education researchers and instructors ( n = 105 individuals). Active learning is frequently used to describe teaching practices, but the term is not well-defined in the context of undergraduate biology education.
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