ABSTRACT
The contrast between the processes in which these two communities are engaged leads biology students to form a misleading picture of the biological research enterprise. In school settings, typical instruction emphasizes the memorization of classification schemas and established theories. Several educational research projects have employed computer modeling tools in science instruction. This chapter describes the embodied approach to biological modeling and the object-based parallel modeling language, StarLogoT, in which the models are constructed. It illustrates this approach by developing embodied models of predator-prey population fluctuations. The chapter proposes a computational model of synchronously flashing fireflies to frame a discussion of the student modeling process and the relationship of this process to modeling within science. Research into scientific literature is often a part of the model development process. The major disparity between the experimental setting and the natural case study was the lack of constraints on the growth of the prey population.
