Bioinspired design as a tool for integrative STEM in the high school classroom
What kinds of approaches can teachers use to teach integrated STEM without leaving students behind? For over a decade, there have been calls to teach STEM in an “integrated” way. Research has shown that students learn more effectively and retain STEM concepts when ideas across fields are taught together rather than in disciplinary chunks. However, it can be challenging to find a way to teach in an integrated way when students still need knowledge from individual subjects.
An example of a student project using mangrove-inspired structures to reduce erosion during sea level rise, (Cipriano, Houdek, Jacobson)
The field of bioinspired design offers an exciting way to merge the teaching of science and engineering and hook students who love nature, but aren’t particularly interested in the egg drops or bridge building exercises that dominate many STEM activities. Bioinspired design—the imitation of how biological traits work for human applications—has been receiving more and more attention in engineering, chemistry, optics, design and nanotechnology over the last thirty years. As an approach, bioinspired design is inherently integrated – solutions to problems are designed and engineered through studies of biology, chemistry, and physics. Teaching science through a bioinspired lens is also inherently inquiry-based, which is an effective way to engage students in STEM while teaching critical thinking skills.
From dry adhesives inspired by geckos to self-assembling furniture inspired by pinecones, bioinspired design has the potential to translate diverse adaptations across thousands of species into a wide range of applications to combat disease, hunger, and climate change through the development of new materials and technologies. In a time of widespread eco-anxiety among students, it can be motivating to explore bioinspired solutions that help solve big problems.
Working for over a year with K-12 teachers, evolutionary biologists, engineers, designers, artists, curriculum designers, and filmmakers, we created a free unit to support a student-driven bioinspired-design project. In this flexible mini-unit—which could function as a Project Based Learning (PBL) unit—students walk through a series of four videos (playlist here) that help them to choose a product to redesign, brainstorm what piece of the product needs some improvement, and then analogize to biology for ideas.
The lessons include helpful online tools for exploring biology, while also learning how to critically evaluate evidence. Teachers using the lessons have remarked: “I loved the notion of biologizing the problem” and “Kids asked for more. Once they got to function/organisms, they loved doing research. Lots of talking and sharing ‘did you know that..??!’”
Taking a bioinspired approach can lead to creative and novel ideas because organisms have evolved to deal with many of the same environmental challenges facing human societies—such as droughts, floods, competition, and epidemics–but often in different ways. We have a lot to learn by studying how a shark’s skin reduces drag, a seal’s blubber insulates, or a butterfly’s wing reflects light. As students dive into these adaptations through the lens of solving problems they have identified themselves, they will become fixated with ideas of how products could be redesigned based on features of biological traits.
From a 7th grade teacher in Nashville: “Students loved coming up with ‘what if’ statements. Some examples were ‘What if a submarine could resist pressure like a crab?’ and ‘What if a loofa sponge could exfoliate like a cat’s tongue?” For some classrooms this may be as far as they go. But one of us (Emilie) ran this unit with undergrads, and went on to build prototypes for their bio-inspired ideas over the course of a semester. For instance, one group studied filtration in baleen whales and explored how it could be scaled up into a device to filter ocean pollution. These students went from looking at baleen under the microscope in a natural history museum, to diagramming a design for their product, to testing out a device in a 5-gallon aquarium at the end of the class. Student projects provide an opportunity for students to fully integrate all of the components of STEM into their bio-inspired solutions.
We hope you will use these materials (which are free and fully editable in Google Workspace) to help students see that—though the world may feel chaotic and sometimes gloomy—it is also bursting with life that has flourished and adapted for over a billion years. The answers to our most complex problems may be under our feet in the xylem of a plant or in the cytoplasm of a bacterium on our own skin, waiting to be discovered.
Primary Sources for Further Exploration
Honey, M, Pearson, G, and H. Schweingruber (Eds). 2014. STEM Integration in K-12 Education: Status, Prospects, and an Agenda for Research. Stem Integration in K-12 Education: Status, Prospects, and an Agenda for Research. National Academy of Engineering and the National Research Council, 165 pages. https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/18612/chapter/1
Snell-Rood, EC and D Smirnoff. 2023. Biology for Biomimetics I: function as an interdisciplinary bridge in bio-inspired design. Bioinspiration and Biomimetics 18:052001. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-3190/ace5fb/meta
Snell-Rood, EC, D Smirnoff, H Cantrell, K Chapman, E Kirscht, E Stretch. 2021. Bioinspiration as a method of problem-based STEM education: a case study with a class structured around the COVID-19 crisis. Ecology and Evolution 11: 16374-16386. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ece3.8044
Boesel, LF, Greiner, C, Arzt, E, del Campo, A. 2010. Gecko-Inspired Surfaces: A Path to Strong and Reversible Dry Adhesives. Advanced Materials 19: 2125-2137. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/adma.200903200