As a teacher, I feel that it is important to have a mastery in the content that is being

taught. I feel that I have achieved this through my studies as an undergraduate and as a graduate

student. My undergraduate degree was in biology, and my graduate degree is a Master’s of Arts

in Teaching with a concentration in biology. I feel that having a degree in the content that is

being taught will allow a teacher to create more well- rounded lessons and also be able to explain

interesting aspects of biology to the class. For example, many students know about or have heard

about the British royal family, but what they may not have known is the fact that there was a

genetic disorder present in the pedigree, and the lack of knowledge as to how this disorder is

passed from one generation to the next, caused a spread of the disorder throughout Europe

(Bhadra, 2015). This disorder is hemophilia, a blood disorder that prevents blood from clotting

when an individual is cut. Hemophilia was first present in Queen Victoria, and then she passed it

on to her children. Her children then were married, which continued the transmission of

hemophilia from one generation to the next among many different familial lines. This connection

would probably not have been possible had I not had the knowledge of how hemophilia is passed

from generation to generation (Potts, 1996).

Having extensive content knowledge also allows a teacher to determine the areas where

students might have misconceptions about the information (Callingham, Carmichael, & Watson,

2016). For example, students were at first under the impression that plants did not have to

undergo cellular respiration because they undergo photosynthesis. This misconception is

common because students believe that photosynthesis gives a plant everything that it needs in

order to survive. I had to explain to students that while plants need to go through photosynthesis

to create glucose, they also need a process to harvest the energy that is present in the glucose

molecule, so plants must undergo cellular respiration as well. Plants help animals by providing
organic carbon that animals can use for their own cellular respiration processes. This

misconception was a tough one to overcome, because students are told from a young age that

plants only use photosynthesis and animals only undergo cellular respiration.

Another example of student misconceptions was that one could block out all the sperm

that would result in a female child. The students had the misconception that the sperm carrying

the Y chromosome somehow looked visually different from those that carried the X

chromosome. This was relatively easy to explain to students that the two sperm do not look

different from each other, and that we do not have the technology to determine for certain the

differences between the information carried by one sperm as opposed to another. I was taught

this when I had taken developmental biology as an undergraduate (Bailie, 2017). The class

emphasized that there are millions of combinations of genes, but there is no way to determine the

specific combination present in one gamete, without the organism itself developing, and us

following that process.

I feel that without my knowledge in biology, I would not have been able to effectively

explain these misconceptions to the students. I feel that knowing more than what the standards

ask the students to learn is important, because it allows me to offer a deeper explanation of the

concept to the students. I also feel that the students enjoy and respond to the fact that I have the

content knowledge necessary to teach them biology (Robertson, Scherr, Goodhew, Daane, Gray,

& Aker, 2017). There are several classes that I have taken that have helped me to teach biology

are molecular cell biology, animal biology, and fundamentals of evolution. I feel that each class

has given me the knowledge that I need and more to teach students about cellular processes,

organisms, and evolution. There are many other classes that I have taken that have helped me

tach biology content, but I feel that these three are the most helpful.
 References

Bailie, A. L. (2017). Developing Preservice Secondary Science Teachers’ Pedagogical Content

Knowledge Through Subject Area Methods Courses: A Content Analysis. Journal Of

Science Teacher Education, 28(7), 631-649. doi:10.1080/1046560X.2017.1394773

Bhadra, A. a. (2015). When life played dice with royal blood. Resonance: Journal Of Science

Education, 20(9), 769-787. doi:10.1007/s12045-015-0237-9

Callingham, R., Carmichael, C., & Watson, J. M. (2016). Explaining Student Achievement: The

Influence of Teachers' Pedagogical Content Knowledge in Statistics. International

Journal Of Science And Mathematics Education, 14(7), 1339-1357.

Potts, W. (1996). Royal haemophilia. Journal Of Biological Education (Society Of

Biology), 30(3), 207.

Robertson, A. D., Scherr, R. E., Goodhew, L. M., Daane, A. R., Gray, K. E., & Aker, L. B.

(2017). Identifying Content Knowledge for Teaching Energy: Examples from High

School Physics. Physical Review Physics Education Research, 13(1), 010105-1.