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Post16 Teaching About Science

Key facts

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AS/A Biology
Time: 60 minutes
Downloadable resources
Teacher guidance

Download with detailed advice for teachers (pdf, 64K)

Activities

OHTs, background information and student sheets for the lesson.

Resources part 1 (pdf, 512K)
Resources part 2 (pdf, 576K)

Lesson B: Cell membranes

Focus
Experimental data provide the basis from which scientific understanding of the
natural world develops. However, scientific understanding does not emerge
unproblematically from the data without the creative, intuitive thinking of scientists.
In other words, scientists have to decide what kind of data to collect, and how to think
about that data in order to build scientific knowledge about the world.
In situations where there is more than one model available, new evidence may support
one model more than the others. In these situations scientists need to decide whether
such evidence is sufficient for them to shift their support to this model.
The overall focus of this teaching is to make clear to students that scientific
understanding does not just emerge from experimental data, and to develop their
confidence in evaluating the extent to which evidence supports scientific
explanations.
Rationale

The lesson aims to help students develop their understanding of the role of theoretical
models in science. In particular that:

producing models involves conjecture and creative thinking;

competing models can arise;
further scientific research can lead to the acceptance of one model as a
consensus view.

Activities
This lesson consists of three activities.
Activity B1

Students are asked to evaluate a straightforward conclusion drawn from experimental

evidence.
Activity B2

Students evaluate two competing models in the light of contemporary evidence and
identify the parts of the models that are not evident from the data.
Activity B3

Students re-evaluate the two models and a third, more recent, model in the light of
further evidence. It should now be clear how the increased amount of evidence
supports a single model.
The Nuffield Foundation 2003