Conceptual Understanding of Homeostasis

Analyzing students' perceptions is essential to the development of studying scientific concepts. In particular, this research investigates students' conceptual understanding of a fundamental biological principle: homeostasis. Homeostasis is difficult to understand as it is both tangible and abstract. The correct perception of homeostasis is necessary to obtain a comprehensive understanding and an in-depth diagnosis of the health of the human body in a variety of physiological conditions such as aging and disease. In order to help students achieve a conceptual understanding of homeostasis, we defined the following eight characteristics: process dynamics, physiological balance, control and regulation, feedback mechanism, environments, dependency between events within a system or a process, multisystems, and levels of organization. The primary goal of this study was to investigate students' perceptions of homeostasis, after studying these characteristics. For this purpose, 93 biology majors in 12th grade studied the characteristics of homeostasis. An analysis of the students' responses shows their correct scientific perceptions of the characteristics of homeostasis, but also reveals a great variety of erroneous perceptions. Our results suggest that the division of a scientific principle into its component characteristics may help the teachers in identifying their students' thinking and conceptual understanding of homeostasis.