There are strong classroom ties between mathematics and the sciences of physics and chemistry, but those ties seem weaker between mathematics and biology. Practicing biologists realize both that there are interesting mathematics problems in biology, and that viewing classroom biology in the context of another discipline could support students' development of biology understanding (as mathematics does for physics and chemistry). The Biology Levers Out Of Mathematics study, implemented in public and private schools throughout a metropolitan area in the northeastern United States, tackles this challenge by introducing engineering as a bridge connecting the heretofore isolated silos of classroom mathematics and biology. This study presents engineering design methods for students to use in the posing of biology problems that mathematics then makes possible to resolve. Interviews with teachers and observations of students suggest that this approach makes the understanding of inheritance processes accessible to a wide range of the study's participants.Habits of Mind Could be Socialized in Biology Classrooms (But Aren't)Secondary level biology does not offer students many opportunities to deal with real-world problems along the lines that actual biologists would address in their day-to-day professional practice. This is somewhat negligent on the part of curriculum designers and textbook authors when these problems can be genuinely intriguing and therefore engaging to students. For example, breeding an endangered species in captivity takes on a whole new meaning when that species happens to be a tiger.But engagement can also arise from students being able to sympathize with the stakeholders in problems (Rosson & Carroll, 2009). Entries to complex problems will appear for students who recognize people in the problems just like they are, characters who resemblemembers in students' families or communities, doing things just as the students would, and facing a situation that biology expertise will help them resolve. Or, with the addition of some desirable difficulty, entries to problems can occur where the expertise required is in the students' zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978), just beyond what they already know but yet can accumulate in the process of addressing the problem. The contextual change involved is neither abrupt nor uncomfortably immense, involving a move from the accustomed status of being students in order to try on the roles of consulting professionals and their clients. Such a change might be as simple as consciously leaving behind the role of bewildered students.Instead, secondary level biology students are often handed a sequence of well-defined concepts (e.g., DNA, genes, chromosomes) associated with welldefined relationships and processes (e.g., transcription, dominance, random assortment). No one can see or watch these components without microscopes, and they remain abstract throughout students' association with them. Meanwhile, the same students encounter similarly well-defined abstractions in their mathematics courses, mathematics that could be applied to those biology processes (the way that engineers apply mathematics principles to resolve physics and chemistry problems) in order to demonstrate, explain, predict, and even influence those processes. Except that currently such mathematics is not applied, so those opportunities to move beyond abstraction are wasted.Skills and Concepts in Biology Leveraged through Mathematics and EngineeringThe Partnership for 21st Century Skills groups learning and innovation skills under the mnemonic of four Cs: critical thinking/problem solving, communication, collaboration, and creativity/innovation (2011). When the scientific work at hand is building and refining models of the world (Lehrer, Schauble, & Lucas, 2008), each of these skills can be addressed in biology in the manner that engineers use when approaching a problem: first in the expression of a student's initial model (e. …

Collaborative user oriented design activities are difficult experiences that need to be practiced. Doing so in a professional setting, but without prior experience, can and probably will jeopardize ...

Professionals who work in conceptual design spaces have very different communication needs than those who work in design spaces for detail design. In the conceptual design stage, people, ideas and technologies are typically mobile, fluid and distributedÐeven when relatively co-located. While our approach is exploratory, we hope that this endeavour can help organize a new family of techniques and ideas in the engineering design community. Some key concepts that we deploy are conceptual design, informal graphics, rapid graphical communication and optimal ignorance in the graphical communication process. We will illustrate what we mean by describing a few new methods such as feature-based sketching and edited/annotated photos. We will also discuss preliminary trials using new mobile technologies, such as digital ink pens since 2004, and our research plans for student design teams using Tablet PCs.