Concentrating on Cross-Disciplinary Connections: Using Reaction Rates to Help Students Make Connections Between Chemistry and Biology

Abstract

Too often, science courses (e.g., biology, chemistry, and physics) are disconnected from one another. When this happens, students often don’t see how the different disciplines relate to one another. Through science and engineering practices (SEPs) and crosscutting concepts (CCCs), the NGSS has encouraged integration across disciplines. While much progress has been made in helping students make cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary connections with SEPs and CCCs, disciplinary core ideas (DCIs) are still often siloed. One way to help students see connections between disciplines is to find DCIs that can be connected across courses. In this article, we demonstrate how we used a high school chemistry lesson on the concentration and temperature of reactions (HS-PS1-5) to make connections to the digestive system, cooking and baking, and cellular respiration (HS-LS1-7).

Keywords::

• Chemistry
• biology
• interdisciplinary
• chemical reactions
• cellular respiration

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jesse Wilcox

Jesse Wilcox ([email protected]) (ORCID: 0000-0001-8285-7013) is an assistant professor of biology and science education at the University of Northern Iowa. He teaches courses in biology and methods for elementary and secondary science. He has published over 50 articles—many of which are in the NSTA journals.

Hannah Bustamante,

Hannah Bustamante is a high school teacher at Cedar Falls High School in Cedar Falls, Iowa. She teaches chemistry and physics courses. Hannah has a BA in Chemistry Teaching from the University of Northern Iowa.

Jennifer Donnelly

Jennifer Donnelly ([email protected]) (ORCID: 0009-0005-9195-1657) is the Lab Coordinator for the Biology Department at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa. She also teaches introductory-level biology classes and Field Ecology. She has a MS degree in Ecology and Evolution from Iowa State University and a BS degree in Zoology from the University of Maryland.