Richard Storey had a fine series of articles in the American Biology
Teacher (ABT) about textbook errors and misconceptions. His first article,
May 1989, dealt with photosynthesis and included the light-dark reaction
confusion. A plant terminology article in ABT or BioScience might do some
good.
The American Society of Agronomy has a glossary of terms that they update
periodically to try to bring some uniformity to definitions. Unlike
most botany texts, plant physiology texts usually seem to lack a
glossary. Perhaps that contributes to the problem.
The problem of overuse of terminology in biology teaching is difficult to
attack because it has become a tradition. One semester I tried to discuss
mitosis without the stage terminology - prophase, metaphase, etc. - but
did not find it satisfactory. Having students remember the concept is more
important than just memorizing the term, but the term is useful if you do a
literature search and as a way of remembering the concept.
So many of the terms we use in botany teaching are virtually never used
in day-to-day language or they have different meanings in everyday
language than in botany, e.g. fruit and herb. We make a big deal about
monocot/dicot differences but I have never heard anyone say something
like "My your monocots look lovely today."
*********************************************************************
David R. Hershey
Snail mail: 6700 Belcrest Road #112, Hyattsville, MD 20782-1340
Adjunct Professor, Biology/Horticulture Dept.
Prince George's Community College, Largo, MD 20772-2199
Email: dh321 at pgstumail.pg.cc.md.us
*********************************************************************
On 21 Apr 1997, Ken Klemow wrote:
> Ross Konig wrote:
>> >There are many words that need to be fixed in plant
> >physiology in similar ways (photoperiodism is usually
> >noctoperiodism, abscisic acid should have been named dormin,
> >dark reactions can only operate in daylight, etc.).
> >
>> I heartily agree with this.
>> One of my own pet peeves with terminology involves photosynthesis. I
> despise the terms "light" and "dark" reactions because it gives students an
> erroneous feel for what is happening. Instead, I prefer the terms
> "light-dependent" vs "light-independent" phases, and indeed have taught
> those terms to my students for the past dozen years.
>> Interestingly, our department hired a second botanist, who is teaching
> photosynthesis as part of our first-semester introductory sequence. Much
> to my chagrin, he insists on using the light and dark reaction terminology.
> When we discussed the relative merits of the terms during a lab prep
> session, he refused to change, noting that the "light reaction / dark
> reaction" terminology is "standard". He argued that those are the terms
> that Calvin, Warburg, and Bjorkman used, and therefore we should continue
> to teach them. The discussion became rather "spirited", and led to some
> frayed nerves.
>> To address Ross's question, how do we "fix" bad terminology? It seems that
> we need some system to (1) decide on some standards for terminology (beyond
> nomenclature of organisms and molecules), and (2) effectively educate all
> educators about the terms so that we don't have some students learning the
> "accepted" terms, while others continue to learn the obsolete terms.
>> As an aside, I could anticipate some postings from individuals who maintain
> that terminology is unimportant altogether, and we shouldn't get so hung up
> on that facet of biology. To those individuals, I recommend an essay
> written by Mark Twain in "A Tramp Abroad", dealing with hitching horses.
> That essay, with some commentary, is included in the introduction to Agnes
> Chase's "First Book of Grasses" published in 1964 by the Smithsonian.
>> How do we proceed?
>> Ken K.
>>> Kenneth M Klemow, Ph.D.
> Department of Biology
> Wilkes University
> Wilkes-Barre, PA 18766
> (717) 831-4758
>kklemow at wilkes1.wilkes.edu>http://wilkes1.wilkes.edu:80/~kklemow>>>
