Disciplinary authenticity: Enriching the reforms of introductory physics courses for life-science students

TL;DR

This paper explores how disciplinary authenticity influences the integration of physics and mathematics into introductory biology courses, highlighting challenges and implications for interdisciplinary education reform.

Contribution

It expands the concept of authenticity to analyze disciplinary practices and applies this framework to assess interdisciplinary tools in biology courses for the first time.

Findings

Interdisciplinary tools are used differently in biology compared to physics.

Students face epistemological challenges with interdisciplinary content.

The study informs physics education reforms for life-science students.

Abstract

Educators and policy-makers have advocated for reform of undergraduate biology education, calling for greater integration of mathematics and physics in the biology curriculum. While these calls reflect the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of biology research, crossing disciplinary boundaries in the classroom carries epistemological challenges for both instructors and students. In this paper we expand on the construct of authenticity to better describe and understand disciplinary practices, in particular to examine those used in physics and biology courses. We then apply these ideas to examine an introductory biology course that incorporates physics and mathematics. We characterize the uses of interdisciplinary tools in this biology course and contrast them with the typical uses of these tools in physics courses. Finally, we examine student responses to the use of mathematics and physics in this course, to better understand the challenges and consequences of using interdisciplinary tools in introductory courses. We link these results to the reform initiatives of introductory physics courses for life-science students.