How can Concepts for Teaching and Learning in IBDP Biology be Utilised?
Course design is a good starting point. How you structure the course indicates how conceptual you intend the course to be. The Teacher Support Material for Biology (published in September 2023) provides examples of potential pathways through the course and will be a good place to start. Here are some suggestions for creating conceptual units:
Linking questions are provided at the end of each section to encourage teachers to make connections between the different sections. Remember, if there is a connection, there is a conceptual unit that could be created.
Linking questions are great for conceptual connections as you move through the course. They provide hooks on which students can connect knowledge. Use them in your day-to-day teaching to connect concepts.
If you are having trouble creating concept-based units, consider creating your first conceptual units for use later in the course. Concepts can be a challenge early in the course as teachers may feel that students need more knowledge to make this work. By the end of year one however, students should have made enough connections for a teacher to feel more comfortable at teaching with the concepts in mind. That said, connections can and should be made as early as possible.
You can use some of the activities suggested in the introduction as a way of beginning the concept discussion with your students.
Generating Conceptual Links
As you move through the course, the conditions for creating conceptual links grow. One way to think about links is from broad to specific. For example:
As you move down the boxes, the concepts become more specific. There are more ideas and concepts that could be put into the boxes; for example, protein folding could lead to enzymes and then to active sites.
An excellent exercise would be to give students a blank diagram, like the one below, and ask them to fill in the boxes. Alternatively, you could fill in some parts of the boxes and encourage the students to make the links and connections to the rest of the topics. Or as the picture below shows, start with a large concept and complete some of the boxes.
The example below illustrates links within the concept of continuity and change.
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