Teaching Secondary Biology: Variation

The differences that exist between living things are termed ‘biological variation’ and this occupies a central part of how biologists think about the living world. Variation is important to many broad areas of biology from the molecular level of how genes function to the diversity of species and the vastness of geological time and evolution. This makes teaching and learning about variation both exciting but also potentially daunting for teachers and hard for students to access. For example, some concepts are very abstract, whilst others require students to bring together different knowledge from across the curriculum in order to properly understand complex ideas.