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OUR RESEARCH

The goals of this project are to develop teaching units for large enrollment courses that address misconceptions in ecology and evolution and, thus, develop a new prototype of a practice and product for such courses. The conceptual focus of this project is application of the 5E cycle of instruction, which refers to lessons built on cycles of “engage, explore, explain, elaborate and evaluate”. Implicit in the 5E cycle is identification of and challenge to misconceptions. For example, the ‘engage’ phase typically includes a discrepant event to challenge a misconception. The term ‘cycle’ refers to the need to re-attack misconceptions in subsequent cycles (but not necessarily in the same unit or course) because they are so resistant to change.

Stamp N, Armstrong M (2005) Using "The Power of Story" to overcome ecologcal misconceptions and build sophisticated understanding. Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America 86 (3): 177-183.

Stamp N, Armstrong M, Biger J (2006) Ecological misconceptions, survey III: The challenge of identifying sophisticated understanding. Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America 87(2):168-175.

Stamp N, Robinson D, Urban R (2007) The Everglades power-of-story 5E-teaching unit. Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, in press

Introduction | Self Test | Ecological Misconceptions | 5 E Method of Instruction
Our Research | Power of Story | Resources | Acknowledgements | Contact Us | Home

marmstro@binghamton.edu