The only tree-thinking study looking at upper level college students found that, as compared to introductory student, these upper division students showed only small improvements in their tree-thinking skills (Meir et al. 2007).
Misconceptions in Associating Genetic Drift with Other Evolutionary Mechanisms were substantially more common among upper-division students than among introductory students, whereas misconceptions in Associating Genetic Drift with Population Boundaries were less common among upper-division students than among introductory students (Table 3).
We designed our instrument for upper-division biology students, so misconceptions primarily expressed by introductory students were outside the scope of this instrument (for a developmental model of genetic drift expertise, see Andrews et al., 2012).
This may reflect, in part, the more heterogeneous preparation of introductory students.
But it does not seem to have helped introductory students learn basic economic principles.
For example, Hall et al. (2011) documented introductory students' epistemological stances in interviews.
Additional strategies to help introductory students gain a broader understanding of topic areas are discussed.
Learner groups consisted of students in introductory and upper-division college geology courses at two different institutions.
For example, in contrast to the shifts toward novice-like thinking in introductory courses, students in upper-division courses do not as commonly show novice-like shifts (physics: Adams et al., 2006; chemistry: Adams, personal communication).
We have given the final version of CLASS-Bio to students in both introductory and upper-division biology courses across four institutions (CU; UBC; Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA; and University of Maryland, College Park, MD).
For most introductory biology students, for example, the phases of cell division are just terms to memorize for a test.
