Biology Made Real and Meaningful

This outstanding book … deserves to be very widely read. I hope it makes a major contribution to how school biology is taught. Dr Michael J. Reiss

Biology Made Real explores what makes school biology meaningful for students. Drawing on many sources – including personal experience, educational research, and the history and philosophy of biology – you’ll find a fresh way of seeing biology teaching and how I’ve enacted it.

What’s inside:

  • A vision for an integrated and meaningful biology education.
  • A framework for teaching for meaning-making.
  • Concepts that help create a unified narrative across different topics.
  • A taxonomy of understanding can be shared with students and used to assess work.
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  • Michael Reiss

    Outstanding book

    Innovative books about school teaching are, all too sadly, rarely written by classroom teachers—they simply don’t have the time. This outstanding book is, nevertheless, the work of a classroom biology teacher. I wish I had read it while I was still teaching school biology. It has helped me to see so many aspects of teaching in a new light. It deserves to be very widely read. I hope it makes a major contribution to how school biology is taught.
    Dr. Michael Reiss
    Professor of Science Education, University of London

  • A full 5 stars

    “Even if it was a bit dense at times. What truly stands out is how it inspired me to really rethink my approach to teaching biology, prompting a level of reflection that was unprecedented in my 10+ year career.”
    Ava Pearlman
    Amazon review

  • Fantastic Book

    “I happily transitioned from a biology specialist to a physics specialist many years ago but this is the first book to have reignited my interest in teaching biology again … I can say it has got me thinking and rethinking in all kinds of ways.”
    Duse Mato
    Amazon Review

  • Likely to change how you teach

    Biology Made Real comes with an educational health warning: be prepared to have your beliefs challenged. Christian has thought long and hard about all aspects of Biology and created a comprehensive set of frameworks that educators can use to improve their teaching. The text is infused with examples from his classroom practice and underpinned by robust scholarly evidence. Not only is this book likely to change how you teach biology, but also how you perceive yourself within the living world.
    Dr Alex Sinclair
    Institute of Education, St Mary’s University

  • Excellent text

    It’s strange that a subject priding itself on an integrated view of life on Earth should take a reductionist and atomistic approach to its teaching. Moore-Anderson takes us on a different journey, suggesting that nature’s unifying forces become pedagogical ones. Yes, we are studying trees, but they are part of the woods that we also need to understand. This is an excellent text demanding we think not just about what we teach but also why and how.
    Dr Paul Ganderton
    Consultant and Researcher