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Pathways to Scientific Teaching, Chapter 3a of 7: Practicing scientific inquiry: what are the rules?

Ecologists attempt to establish general principles from a vast range of organizational, spatial, and temporal scales (Belovsky et al. 2004). The process of developing generalities in ecology involves two approaches often not addressed in introductory science courses – inductive and deductive. One way of thinking about this is to consider the inductive approach as examining particular cases and deriving general conclusions or rules from them, and the deductive approach as using generalities to make specific predictions that can then be tested. In this issue of Frontiers, Knapp et al. [attached] underline the need for general principles or “rules” in ecology, and research that tests the predictive limits of those rules. The rules illustrated in this article are based on long-term studies from the Konza prairie and Sevilleta Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites. Existing data from savanna grasslands in South Africa are used to test rules derived from Konza studies of grassland responses to fire.
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Resource Group "Pathways to Scientific Teaching" is based on a series of two-page articles published in "Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment" from August 2004 to June 2006 that illustrated effective instructional methods to help students gain conceptual understanding in ecology (Diane Ebert-May and Janet Hodder, 2008).

This installment of the Pathways to Scientific Teaching series describes one or more instructional strategies that use scientific papers to teach selected concepts. While specific journal articles are used in demonstrating these strategies, we would like to emphasize that each activity in the Pathways series has been designed for use with any scientific article on a similar topic, and not just the example shown here.

Note that in addition to undergraduate faculty, many high school teachers can use these articles as well in their biology courses.
Resource Group Link http://ecoed.esa.org/index.php?P=AdvancedSearch&Q=Y&FK=%22Pathways+to+...
Primary or BEN resource type
Secondary resource type
Discipline Specific Core Concepts
Life science discipline (subject)
Keywords LTER, inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning,
Audience
Intended End User Role
Language
Educational Language
Pedagogical Use Category
Pedagogical Use Description Students will engage in the processes of science as they search for patterns and predict causal effects about the influence of precipitation and temperature on net primary productivity in different biomes.

This installment of the Pathways to Scientific Teaching series describes one or more instructional strategies that use scientific papers to teach selected concepts. While specific journal articles are used in demonstrating these strategies, we would like to emphasize that each activity in the Pathways series has been designed for use with any scientific article on a similar topic, and not just the example shown here.

Note that in addition to undergraduate faculty, many high school teachers can use these articles as well in their biology courses.
Aggregation Level
Structure
Full Name of Primary Author Diane Ebert-May
Primary Author Controlled Name
Primary Author Affiliation Michigan State University
Primary Author email ebertmay@msu.edu
Secondary Author Name(s) Kathy S Williams 2, Everett P Weber 1, Janet Hodder 3, Douglas Luckie 1
Secondary Author Affiliation(s) 1 Michigan State University, 2 San Diego State University, 3 University of Oregon
Added By Id
  • Celia
Rights Copyright 2008, the Ecological Society of America
License
Publisher
Review type
Drought and Water Ecosystem Services Collection Off
Conservation Targets Under Global Change Collection Off
Big Data Collection Off
Editors Choice No
Resource Status
Date Of Record Submission 2011-12-05
I Agree to EcoEdDL's Copyright Policy & Terms of Use No
Date Of Record Release 2012-03-05 11:40:42
Last Modified By Id
  • mcmilla
Date Last Modified 2013-05-23 10:18:17
Release Flag Published

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