Integration of Islamic Concept in Teaching Biology in the University

This research entitled “Integration of Islamic Concept in Teaching Biology in the University”. Biological science that is taught in most learning institutions has been secular in nature. Almost all of the biological processes, theories and principles are taught without referring to Islamic concept. The teaching of Qur'an is separated from the teaching of Biological science. Thus, many Muslim students and teachers have kept on patronizing secular curriculum of the west. Hence, this research work spelled out the relevant and applicable Qur’anic verses to Biology, assessed why Biological teachings of Islam should be a part of the curriculum in the university, and determined the perception and level of awareness of the students and teachers on the relevance of certain Biological concept and Islamic context. This study was conducted at the Mindanao State University - Sulu. This research was both qualitative and quantitative since the findings were based on theories, Qur’anic verses, interviews and percentage computation. Based on the findings, there were many Qur-anic verses dealing with Biological sciences, and these verses were relevant and applicable to Biology. Specifically on sex determination which deals with the sex of organism. The verse is “He bestows female upon whom He wills, and bestows male upon He wills (Qur’an, 42:49), also, has He taken daughters out of what He has created, and He has selected for your son? (Qur’an, 43:16). And made of him two sexes, male and female (Qur’an, 75:39). Another, We have created you in pairs, male and female (Qur’an, 78:8). This verse is also relevant to the function of gene which determines the two contrasting traits. On order, a characteristic of life which refers to the organization and precise arrangement of structure of organism is related to this verse, Allah shaped and fashioned him in due proportion (Qur’an, 75:38). On adaptation in which the organism must undergo changes to survive. Verily! Allah will not change the good condition of organisms as long as they do not change themselves (Qur’an, 13:11). Regarding perceptions and awareness, almost all the participants were aware and agreed on the relevance of Biological science to Islam. The results revealed that some of the Biological theories, principles and process are relevant and applicable to Qur’anic verses. However, the researcher recommended that there is a need for the Biological teaching of Islam to be part of the curriculum in the university in order to avoid confusion on Biological concept and Islamic context. The Holy Qur-an contain verses relevant and applicable to Biological concept. Most of the respondents have agreed and believed on both Biological and Islamic concepts as reflected on the findings above. Therefore, integration of Islamic concept in teaching Biology is necessary.

Environmental Desire in: The Mill on the Floss

Jayne Hildebrand, “Environmental Desire in George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss” (pp. 192–222) This essay argues that George Eliot’s expansive use of landscape description in The Mill on the Floss (1860) represents an engagement with the emerging concept of a biological “medium” or “environment” in the nineteenth-century sciences. In the 1850s, scientific writers including Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, and G. H. Lewes redefined biological life as dependent on an abstraction called a “medium” or “environment”—a term that united all the objects, substances, and forces in an organism’s physical surroundings into a singular entity. Eliot in The Mill on the Floss draws out the ecological potential of this new biological concept by imbuing the described backgrounds of her novel with a lyrical affect I call “environmental desire,” a diffuse longing for ambient contact with one’s formative medium that offers an ethical alternative to the possessive and object-driven forms of desire that drive the plot of a traditional Bildungsroman. Maggie Tulliver’s marriage plot is structured by a tension between environmental desire and possessive desire, in which her erotic desire for Stephen Guest competes with a more diffuse environmental desire that attaches to the novel’s described backgrounds. Ultimately, the new environment concept enables Eliot to reconceive the Bildungsroman’s usual opposition between self and world as a relationship of nourishment and dependency rather than struggle, and invites a reconsideration of the ecological role of description in the Bildungsroman genre.

Liminal hypotext–hypertext relations in selected Shakespearean prequels, sequels and gap-fillers

Liminality is inherent in the adaptation process situated ‘in-between’. Proposing the ‘biological’ concept of symbiosis, David Cowart distinguishes between the ‘host’ and the ‘guest’ text. Symbiosis as a shape-shifting concept involves a two-directional adaptation process, an ‘epistemic dialogue’, where interest is in how the later text’s meaning is produced in relation to the earlier and how the overall production of meaning is affected by the hypertext. To obliterate the lines of influence, temporal distance, privilege and importance, it is possible to conceive of the relation between hypotext and the hypertextual ‘attachment’ as rhizomatic and thus to locate the ‘hypertext product’ in a region where historical genealogies either no longer matter or need to be seriously reconceptualized The article discusses the hypotext–hypertext relations in a selection of modern and postmodern adaptations by Maurice Baring, Gordon Bottomley, WTG and Elaine Feinstein and Linda Bamber, as ‘symbiotic attachments’ or rhizomatic developments whose relationship with the Shakespearean text, or rather ‘aggregate’ can be variously defined in narrative terms. I argue that texts located in the position of prologues, epilogues or separately published ‘letters’ – defined as prequels, sequels or gap-fillers and often pointing to an ontological or temporal elsewhere – can be variously defined as elements of the main text, metatexts masquerading as paratexts or framing borders and that they function as generators of meaning.

Biological Conceptualization of Race

The conception of racial categories from a biological perspective is unconsciously embedded in the individual’s cognition. This is true even among university students majoring in biology and medicine. Even though students have never learned about “race” explicitly in formal biology class, they are highly likely to implicitly construct, and hold biological concepts of race. This study investigated how Korean college students majoring in General Science Education define the concept of race and acquire a scientific conception of race. The study draws on Efstathiou (2009)’s framework of the “founded concept.” Two open-ended questions regarding race conceptualization were administered to 218 college students. Furthermore, interviews with three students were conducted to explore any biological meaning of race. The results suggest four types of conception held by students about race. These were race as a typological means of distinguishing human diversity, race as a biological concept, race as a social construct, and race as a bio-social mixture. Additionally, in-depth interviews indicated that students constructed their biological concept of race unintentionally through learning biology. There are three mediators which have a role as mediator in the transfiguration process of finding and founding race concepts in a biological context: skin color, reproductive isolation, and ethnicity. Accordingly, science teachers should carefully teach this information in order to help prevent any misunderstanding of biological racial concepts. Teaching strategies and other educational implications are discussed.

The Folk Concept of Race

This chapter examines whether and how concepts vary across and within individuals (inter- and intra-individual variation) by examining what constrains variation of concepts. To address this issue, the chapter focuses on an independently interesting case study: inter- and intra-individual variation in the concept of race. The case study contrasts two competing hypotheses about the concept of race: the biological and the social hypotheses. According to the first hypothesis, the concept of race is a biological concept that is constrained by folk biology; according to the second, it is the concept of a social category. The chapter shows that people’s folk biology constrains the concept of race and thus limits how much concepts of race can vary within and across individuals.

The Validity of the Human Circulatory System Concepts Handout at Class XI IPA SMAN 6 Banjarmasin

The use of good and appropriate teaching materials during the teaching and learning process can make learning more meaningful, namely creating an atmosphere of active learning for students, so that students can achieve the competencies expected by understanding the concepts of learning. The concept of the human circulatory system is a Biological concept that is relatively difficult to understand, so research and development of teaching materials are carried out in the form of handouts. This research and development aim to describe the validity of the concept handout of the human circulatory system of class XI IPA SMAN 6 Banjarmasin. This research is a type of research and development with a 4D development model. This research is limited only to the Develop stage. The results of the research and development of the concept handout of the human circulatory system of class XI IPA SMAN 6 Banjarmasin are classified as very valid with a validity value of 90%.

Population Demography, Ancestry, and the Biological Concept of Race

For more than 50 years, biological anthropology has argued against the use of the biological race concept. Despite such efforts, aspects of the concept remain in circulation within society and within the discipline itself. As commonly articulated, anthropology's rejection of the biological race concept lacks an evolutionarily based explanatory grounding. Biological patterns of variation in living humans do not map onto commonly utilized categorizations of race, but this knowledge does not explain why human evolution has not produced such structures. This article attempts to offer one such explanation by constructing a biocultural framing of race around ancestry. By examining ancestry through two related lenses, genealogical and genetic, it is shown that the coherence of race as a biological concept has been disrupted by demographic changes in our recent evolutionary past. The biological construction of race is invalid not because it is impossible but because evolutionary forces have actively worked against such patterns in our evolutionary past.

Rethinking heritability

Two markedly different concepts of heritability co-exist in the social and life sciences. Behavioral genetics has popularized a highly technical, quantitative concept: heritability as the proportion of genetic variance relative to the total phenotypic variance of a trait in a population. At the same time, a more common biological notion simply refers to the transmission of phenotypic traits across generations via the transmission of genes. It is argued here that the behavioral-genetic concept is of little use overall, while the common biological concept is overly narrow and implies a false view of the significance of genes in development. By appropriately expanding heritability into a general causal concept based on its role in evolution, we will arrive at a new view of development, heritability, and evolution that recognizes the importance of non-genetic inheritance and the causal parity of all determinants of phenotypic traits.