The Importance of Biology

We all want to get across the importance of biology to society in our teaching (it helps enthuse and motivate our students) and specifications are required to contain application contexts (DfE, 2014). There isn’t, however, the requirement to teach students a framework for this that allows them to see the importance of biology for themselves in a novel context.

This article aims to provide a framework that teachers can use with students throughout biology courses so that the students can build up the skills to appreciate the importance of all that they are studying and not just the specific application contexts of a specification.

The framework explores and provides some example contexts for the following reasons for studying biology: to bring joy; to inform intervention; to develop tools; to trigger inspiration; to inform decisions; and to find answers.

It is hoped that teaching with this approach in mind will help build student motivation for all topics in biology, encourage more of them into further study and possibly a biology related career, and help them to be better scientists in the future.

This work, presented at the ASE Annual Conference 2021, is currently still in draft format and has been carried out by Dr Chris Graham, Head of Biology at Hills Road Sixth Form College (seconded to SAPS).