Metrological concepts in biology courses in higher education
Les concepts métrologiques dans les formations du supérieur en biologie
Résumé
Natural sciences are built on qualitative and quantitative observations of living systems in various experimental situations, leading to the key role of measurements in research and development activities. Concepts of metrology – the science of measurement – have been mainly developed in physic studies or for industrial process. Even if biostatistics education use some metrological methods, adjustments should be done about biology courses at university. For example, a discrepancy between a measurement and its meaning could lead the students to fallacies in the analysis and the interpretation of data. Therefore, understanding the measurement issues might improve the reliability of research results and the confidence in scientific studies.
In this exploratory study, we investigate the metrological concepts and methods involved in the first year university degree of biology courses. This study focuses on course materials provided to students for exercise and practical sessions and the associated teaching goals through syllabi and interviews of teachers. Thus, we define a grid to analyse course material based on 5 rubrics: type of data and measurement; implementation; management; results and values processing; interpretation. We obtain that even if some aspects of measurement are existing, they are not a learning issue. Especially the question of the validity of data and of the reliability of the measurement is never raised. Despite the fact that most of the teachers declare during interviews that measurement is crucial in scientific activities, they corroborate our previous results.
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