OOIR: Observatory of International Research

Papers

(The median citation count of Journal of Biological Education is 1. The table below lists those papers that are above that threshold based on CrossRef citation counts [max. 250 papers]. The publications cover those that have been published in the past four years, i.e., from 2021-11-01 to 2025-11-01.)

Article	Citations
A three-pronged method to analyse pre-service teachers’ understanding and epistemic reasoning about soil	42
Investigation of middle school and high school students’ ecosystem knowledge through their drawings	30
Modelling the immune system and vaccines through design-based research	23
Measuring students’ plant awareness: A prerequisite for effective botany education	14
The UnEssay project as an enriching alternative to practical exams in pre-professional and graduate education	13
The purpose of the school garden is more than just growing plants	13
Fictional placemaking creating meaningful contexts for causal reasoning in secondary school biology education	12
The influence of spatial ability on undergraduate students’ tree-thinking ability	12
Student informed development of virtual reality simulations for teaching and learning in the molecular sciences	12
Open Schooling to raise student awareness and engagement: the case of tackling Antimicrobial Resistance	11
Combining virtual simulations with take-home projects as a replacement for face-to-face labs in introductory biology laboratory courses	9
Teachers’ views of Future-Oriented Pedagogy as part of inquiry-based molecular biology teaching in high school biology laboratories	9
Interactive socio-scientific inquiry for promoting scientific literacy, enhancing biological knowledge, and developing critical thinking	9
“ I felt happy to see animals because they are kind .” How zoological environments shape primary school students’ emotional engagement and interest in science learning	8
“Bacteria are not viruses; viruses are more malicious” - young pupils’ understanding of bacteria and viruses in the aftermath of COVID-19	8
Laboratory class for isoenzymes teaching: simulation of creatine kinase electrophoresis using dyes	8
The Conceptual Analysis of Disciplinary Evidence (CADE) framework as a guide for evidentiary reasoning: A practical implementation in a Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium (HWE) laboratory investigation	7
Differences between image presentation and video presentation on the outcome of teaching about the menstrual cycle	7
Roteiro Entre-Marés: an educational app for ocean literacy promotion	7
Conflict of allegiance: professional development challenges in transforming science teachers’ identities and practices	7
Teaching for photosynthesis literacy: an education design research study	6
What is the future of knowledge?	6
Exploring and comparing the difficulties among undergraduate and postgraduate students’ understanding of experimentation using primary scientific literature	6
Plant awareness: at the dawn of a new era	6
Use of design thinking as a strategy to identify and clear students’ misconceptions in photosynthesis: a case study	6

What is ‘research-led teaching’ and how can we deliver it in University STEM degrees?	6
Plants and the Kunming-Montreal global biodiversity framework: educational approaches to support pro-conservation behaviours	6
Application and exploration of blended learning with BOPPPS teaching model in a veterinary infectious diseases course	6
Environmental literacy curriculum: an analysis of science textbooks for lower secondary education	6
Flower or leaf characteristics, coloured or black and white illustrations – what helps student teachers to identify plants?	6
In awe of awe	5
Higher education and professional performance: gaps and opportunities for developing professional skills in marine biologist graduates	5
Teaching Greek and Latin morphemes: a Classics course correlates with improved biology and anatomy student outcomes	5
Alcohol misuse affects learning in school and university students: a role for biological education	5
Decolonisation and socio-political arenas in science education: reflecting on the role of biological education	5
Conceptions of primary school students and trainee teachers about seed germination	5
Pre-service teachers’ ideas about the path of water through the body and their intentions about explaining it to preschool children	5
The role of the education sector in shaping a sustainable future	5
The medium matters! The effect of a mobile digital identification tool on students’ intrinsic motivation during plant identification	5
The role of biology teachers in epistemically insightful health and wellbeing education: a case study of the English relationships, sex and health education curriculum	4
What is a hypothesis anyway? A synthesis of perspectives and implications for undergraduate biology education based on publications in PLOS biology	4
Anthropocentrism in biology teaching and learning	4
Student reasoning during socio-scientific issues-based learning with a role play: a case study of breastfeeding versus milk formula	4
When less is more in living systems: subtractive cognitive biases and life science learning	4
Whole-school approach to sustainability: an in-depth study of six green schools in Sweden and Türkiye	4
Investigating student experiences of botanical field work using a semi-immersive virtual botanical fieldtrip	4
Assessing the knowledge and attitude of middle and higher secondary school students towards waterbirds in Bhutan	4
SARS-CoV-2 spike protein produced by transgenic rice: research laboratory experience with secondary science students	4
Innovations in microbiological research education: a practical approach for investigating the effects of graphene oxide sheet nanomaterial on opportunistic pathogen viability	4
Characterisation of the pedagogical knowledge of evolution content using the mapping approach	4
Impact of outdoor place-based learning on elementary school students’ ability to make unsolicited observations about living organisms over time	4
From reflection to framework: investigating biology pre-service teachers’ understanding of genetic information flow, exchange, and storage (IFES)	4
Teaching for sustainable development in vocational education	4
Learning outcomes of transforming cutting-edge iPSC research into informal science courses for upper secondary school students	3
Development and validation of an instrument measuring students’ self-efficacy regarding explaining evolutionary changes	3
What is ‘powerful knowledge’ in school biology?	3
An interest-oriented laboratory microbial engineering course is helpful for the cultivation of scientific literacy	3
Exploring individual differences in photosynthesis and respiration knowledge in the context of green plants	3
Cough, sneeze, pass it on – pupils’ understanding of infectious diseases in the aftermath of COVID-19	3
What do clean and dirty hands of primary school pupils look like?	3
The role of reflective journals for biology education students in genetics course	3
Not all Bloom and gloom: assessing constructive alignment, higher order cognitive skills, and their influence on students’ perceived learning within the practical components of an undergraduate biolog	3
Promoting dialogue in the feedback process: face-to-face marking of assignments with biomedical science students	3
Exploring the local vegetation: botanical inquiry trail, an interactive journey of learning	3
Inquiry practices and types of knowledge, with paths of logical associations between inquiry questions, presented as part of an open inquiry process	3
Diagram production in Biology: comparing children and pre-service teachers’ performance	3
Epistemic knowledge considered by secondary school students involved in the examination of a real alimentary emergency	3
Perceived relevance of critical thinking aspects for biology graduate students	3
Between biology and religion: dialogue in the Saudi primary science classroom	3
Policy responses to the decline in the number of students choosing biology beyond compulsory school level in Mauritius	3
Representation of insulin synthesis and construction of a three-dimensional insulin model as didactic tools in basic education	3
Is it time to remove Mendel from the school curriculum?	3
University students’ misconceptions of cellular structures and functions	3
S im H yb 2: a software tool to explore and illustrate evolutionary forces in population genetics teaching and research. Applicati	3
Computational Modelling in High School Biology: A Teaching Intervention	3

Learning genetics through an innovative game: Geneblock	2
Environmental education to engage urban youth: anecdotes from Southwest China	2
Mycelial education to cure fungal awareness disparity syndrome	2
‘Let’s play?’ A systematic review of board games in biology	2
Realising the potential of ecological thinking in our universities	2
Do textbooks provide opportunities to develop meaningful botanical literacy? A case study of the scientific model of plant nutrition	2
Biological Education in the age of Covid: Taking a global perspective	2
Middle school students’ perception of marine and coastal environments	2
Effects of online tours at the zoo and natural history museum on interest in extant and extinct animals	2
Guiding students’ explanations across levels of biological organisation: the case of wilted plants	2
Teaching ecosystem services: a pathway to improve students’ argumentation in favour of nature conservation and sustainable development?	2
High school students’ perceptions of science and scientists improve following university-based online DNA day	2
The use of constructive controversy to improve students’ understandings of and attitudes towards animal welfare in China	2
Using group metacognitive scaffolds in biology education to improve the collaborative problem-solving skills of high school students	2
Epistemological and sociocultural challenges in the teaching of evolution: an analysis of Argentine biology teachers’ discourse	2
Development and validation of a classroom observation protocol for crosscutting concepts (COPCC) for secondary biology	2
Engaging seventh-grade students in prediction-observation-explanation of plant absorbance/transport phenomena: impact on relational conceptual changes and scientific inquiry abilities	2
Designing and evaluation of 3D materials for teaching biological systems to 6 ^th grade students with visual impairment (SVI)	2
Antimicrobial resistance as a nexus between teaching and research	2
Understanding agency in evolutionary explanations: an assessment tool for biology education	2
Pokémon as a playful and didactic tool for teaching about ecological interactions	2
Blending educational gaming with physical experiments to engage high school students in inquiry-based learning	2
Ontological assumptions on the introduction of the concepts of cells and the functioning of living beings in school textbooks	2
The ‘Tea Test’ - a mobile phone based spectrophotometer protocol to introduce biochemical methods independent of the laboratory	1
3D printed chamber for live cell imaging on an upright epifluorescence microscope	1
Creating an effective fluorescence microscopy lesson as a research experience for a science educator-in- training	1
Students’ perceptions of the presence of feral exotic pets and influencing factors	1
Using lessons from a comparative study of chemistry & bioscience pre-lab activities to design effective pre-lab interventions : a case study	1
Difficult topics in the revised biology curriculum for advanced level secondary schools in Rwanda: teachers’ perceptions of causes and remedies	1
Understanding barriers to participation within undergraduate STEM laboratories: towards development of an inclusive curriculum	1
The effect of the ‘Predict-Observe-Explain (POE)’ strategy in teaching photosynthesis and respiration concepts to pre-service science teachers	1
A guided interactive simulation as a tool to teach the classical approach of monoclonal antibody (MAb) production to undergraduate immunology students	1
Constructing aesthetic experience through biology learning from Dewey’s perspective	1
The plant blindness and the humans-as-non-animals bias cycles in the educational system. The need to overcome them	1
Cadaveric specimens versus synthetic models for learning gross human anatomy: a systematic review and meta-analysis	1
Upper secondary students’ thinking pathways in cell membrane biology – an evidence-based development and evaluation of learning activities using the Model of Educational Reconstruction	1
Graph argument analysis: vaccination and the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 as a context to promote learning of molecular biology and argumentation	1
Environmental literacy of lower secondary school pupils in the Czech Republic	1
Using multiple strategies in deepening the understanding of the digestive system	1
Teaching evolution: attitudes & strategies of educators in Utah – an update 20 years later	1
Evolving UK biology education	1
Representation for whom? Transformation of sex/gender discussion from stereotypes to silence in Finnish biology textbooks from 20th to 21th century	1
Influencing the attitude towards hand hygiene and face masks by pathogen visualisation during the COVID-19 pandemic	1
Reflecting on the relevance of drawing as a tool in eliciting pre-service teachers’ preconceptions of human organs and organ systems	1
Sharpening the gaze, sharpening the pencil: supporting observational drawing in primary education	1
Impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on the academic performance of students of distance learning mode in Biological Sciences: a case study in Brazil	1
Effective learning and testing of bird identification skills	1
Development and application of a five-tier diagnostic test to assess misconceptions on Life cycle of cells among senior high school students in Mainland China	1
Students’ conceptions of keeping fattening pigs and dairy cows: an exploratory interview study with elementary school students in North-West Germany	1
Increasing retention in STEM by improving GPA through peer mentors and course enrichments in introductory biology	1
What animals live there? Exploring the factors influencing primary school children’s awareness of native and exotic fauna	1
The effect of CKCM-oriented instruction on Grade 8 students’ conceptual understanding of sustainable development	1
Attitudes towards plants – exploring the role of plants’ ecosystem services	1
Adapting undergraduate Biology to include science practices by teaching students to generate scientific explanations	1
Using a metacognitive awareness approach to improve perception of the fundamental biological principle – homeostasis	1
Reclimating: 0°C as a target for global warming	1
Contribution of 3D modelling and printing to learning in primary schools: a case study with visually impaired students from an inclusive Biology classroom	1
Project-based learning in biomedical sciences: using the collaborative creation of revision resources to consolidate knowledge, promote cohort identity and develop transferable skills	1
Integrating museum education into an introductory biology CURE leads to positive perceptions of scientific research and museum exhibitions among students, faculty, and staff	1
Reflections of hands-on dissection and virtual dissection experiences of pre-service science teachers	1
Examining the use of ecology-related socio-scientific issue debate class using generative AI to improve middle school students’ science and AI literacy	1