Approaches to cell biology teaching: mapping the journey-concept maps as signposts of developing knowledge structures.

Strategies and associated philosophical underpinnings that fall under the rubric of “student-centered” or “inquiry-based” aim to help students develop the intellectual maturity needed to become independent, flexible, self-correcting learners able to make sophisticated analyses and reasoned decisions (McNeal and D’Avanzo, 1997). While the goals of studentactive learning are relatively easy to articulate, the path toward their realization can be a “bumpy road” to navigate for both teacher and learner (Felder and Brent, 1996). Not the least of the challenges to implementation of student-active instruction is that the requisite methods and structures ideally possess what Glaser and Baxter (in a paper presented at the National Academy of Sciences; cited by Ruiz-Primo et al., 2001) define as “low-directedness.” That is, to a large extent, students determine the procedures (the methods used have an open process), and a high conceptual knowledge demand is placed on them (the methods used are content rich). To students whose prior educational landscapes were dominated by high-directedness or instructor-centered terrains, a first encounter with active learning might seem at best a bemusing puzzle and at worst an unfathomable upset to their educational applecart. (“If you know the answer, why don’t you just tell us? How am I supposed to know what to do?”) An instructor contemplating a course transformation to incorporate a student-centered learning environment may feel faced with what seems like a high-wire balancing act— a constantly renegotiated compromise between students’ legitimate needs for structure, well-understood expectations, and good grades and instructors’ foreknowledge that the path to intellectual maturity is “in the doing,” particularly if the “doing” presents a reasonable challenge (Vygotsky, 1978). I (D.A.) was beginning to lose my balance on the high wire of active learning when I was fortunate to have the opportunity to represent my institution’s fledgling problem-based