Quantifying the Types of Representations Used in Common Biochemistry Textbooks

Abstract

Biochemistry education relies heavily on students' ability to visualize abstract cellular and molecular processes, mechanisms, and components. As such, biochemistry educators often turn to external representations to provide tangible, working models from which students' internal representations (mental models) can be constructed, evaluated, and revised. Prior studies have looked at the impact of representations on students understanding of biochemistry. Additional work in this area has looked at the types of representations used to teach and assess biochemistry concepts. However, no study to date has looked at the representations available to both instructors and students in biochemistry textbooks. The study presented here analyzed the representations found in the top four purchased one-semester biochemistry textbooks on Amazon in spring 2015. Using the Taxonomy of Biochemistry External Representations (TOBER), representations were coded as symbolic, macroscopic, particulate, microscopic, or schematic. Results show that, regardless of textbook, particulate representations are most commonly used. Additionally, schematic images are typically used in conjunction with at least one additional type of representation particularly when depicting concepts related to metabolism.