Teaching with principles: Toward more effective pedagogy in ecology

Abstract

Ecology is a complex and dynamic field and, as communicators of our discipline, faculty should be able to define a set of core principles that underpin and create ecological pattern and process. The pedagogical value of defining and drawing on a concise set of disciplinary principles and concepts is well grounded in research on cognition. Here, we present a set of seven core ecological principles from a graduate-level course in ecology as an example of how a pedagogical approach based on principles can provide students with essential components of a mental model shared by their instructor and classmates, and from which a deeper understanding of ecological pattern and process can be achieved. We also provide a series of recommendations to stimulate faculty to think more deeply about the teaching and learning of ecology so that they can identify a set of concepts and principled reasoning appropriate for their teaching circumstance. © 2010 Knapp and D'Avanzo.