Posted: May 22nd, 2023

Concannon’s Transforming Osmosis

This article aims to provide biology teachers with simple yet workable strategies that can be used “…to convert a confirmation-type osmosis laboratory into an inquiry investigation” (Concannon & Brown 23). This is after the realization that the present methods used fail to inculcate a learning culture where students become critical of science, including learning how to analyze scientific concepts and applying the knowledge learned to their daily experiences.

The authors are critical of the fact that although students learn about osmosis – the passage of water molecules that maintains internal cellular stability while the external environment changes – they leave institutions of learning with deeply held delusions about this occurrence.

The authors state that biology teachers should go beyond verification laboratories since these types of laboratories are only limited to science jargon, concepts and facts rather than taking into considerations students’ prior understanding and experiences. As such, all verification activities should be converted to practical inquiry-based explorations. To incorporate inquiry-based investigations to osmosis experiments at the classroom level, teachers must always:

• Involve the learners in driving questions relating to osmosis
• Permit learners to create an approach towards investigating their predictions
• Afford experiment material and time needed to undertake the investigations
• Persuade learners to critically reflect on their experimental results to guide future investigations (Concannon & Brown 24).

On personal reaction, it is indeed true that such a strategy will deeply assist students to lessen their misconceptions about various topics by allowing them the opportunity to practically collect data and generate scientific claims based on active learning experiences.