Cognitive Construal-Consistent Instructor Language in the Undergraduate Biology Classroom.

Researchers have identified patterns of intuitive thinking that are commonly used to understand and reason about the biological world. These cognitive construals (anthropic, teleological, and essentialist thinking), while useful in everyday life, have also been associated with misconceptions about biological science. Although construal-based thinking is pervasive among students, we know little about the prevalence of construal-consistent language in the university science classroom. In the current research, we characterized the degree to which construal-consistent language is present in biology students' learning environments. To do so, we coded transcripts of instructor's speech in 90 undergraduate biology classes for the presence of construal-consistent language. Classes were drawn from two universities with very different student demographic profiles and represented 18 different courses aimed at nonmajors and lower- and upper-division biology majors. Results revealed construal-consistent language in all 90 sampled classes. Anthropic language was more frequent than teleological or essentialist language, and frequency of construal-consistent language was surprisingly consistent across instructor and course level. Moreover, results were surprisingly consistent across the two universities. These findings suggest that construal-consistent language is pervasive in the undergraduate classroom and highlight the need to understand how such language may facilitate and/or interfere with students learning biological science.

Stress, ontogeny, and movement determine the relative importance of facilitation for juvenile mussels.

A number of ecological factors have been shown to influence the importance of positive interactions (i.e., facilitation) in nature, including environmental stress and ontogenetic effects, and many more are likely to emerge as facilitation research expands to new ecosystems and taxa. In this study, I used a combination of field surveys and experiments to explore the roles of stress, ontogeny, and organismal movement in determining the importance of mussel (Mytilus californianus) recruit facilitation in central California. Results indicate that interactions between mussel recruits (shell length <20 mm) and habitat ameliorating neighbors shift from neutral to positive from the low to high mussel zone. I also observed ontogenetic shifts in recruit survival and growth in the upper mussel zone that suggest mussel recruits migrate from algal substrate to adult mussel beds. This type of habitat shift, where an organism moves sequentially from one facilitator to another, may be common in nature and presents an exciting new area for research.