Reconsidering “What Works”

It is a wonderfully exciting time to be involved in undergraduate biology education efforts. The publication of Vision and Change: A Call to Action has motivated many to redouble their efforts in engaging their colleagues and institutions in fundamentally changing the experiences of students in college and university biology classrooms around the country (American Association for the Advancement of Science [AAAS], 2011). In addition, there is a growing community of biologists embarking upon more analytical, scientific, and scholarly approaches to their teaching (Handelsman et al., 2004). Journals such as CBE—Life Sciences Education are building a body of evidence and understanding about the complex nature of biology teaching and learning. Most recently, the founding of SABER—the Society for the Advancement of Biology Education Research—is a further step toward fostering a thriving discipline-based biology education research community that encompasses the often-isolated subdisciplines of biology education. Within this excitement and the new wave of biology education reform, though, there often appears to be a central focus on “solving the problems” of undergraduate biology education, and a desire to bring closure by determining the “best way to teach.” Over the past several years, at conferences, on websites, and in scholarly conversations, I increasingly have heard common use of the phrase “what works” in referring to the primary goals of undergraduate biology education reform. However, trying to determine “what works” is problematic in many ways and belies the fundamental complexities of the teaching and learning process that have been acknowledged by scholars for thousands of