Achievement objectives: Biology (Living world)

The biology contextual strand is about living things and how they interact with each other and the environment.

Progression | Indicators | Context elaborations | NCEA | Qualifications

Achievement objectives: Biology level 6 | level 7 | level 8

The New Zealand Curriculum specifies three sets of achievement objectives for biology:

Life processes
Ecology
Evolution

The curriculum also specifies four sets of achievement objectives for the nature of science strand:

Understanding about science
Investigating in science
Communicating in science
Participating and contributing

The focus of the contextual strands is the ideas of science; the focus of the nature of science strand is ideas about science. Scientific literacy is developed through learning in both kinds of ideas.

Progression in biology

Students’ progress in biology is demonstrated by their increasingly sophisticated ability to identify, apply, and reflect on biological concepts, patterns, and processes.

As they progress, students:

focus less on how specific groups of organisms carry out their life processes and more on how the diversity of strategies across species enables organisms to occupy differing niches in an ecosystem
move from recognising the common life processes to appreciating those life processes at the cell level and then at a homeostatic systems level
move from recognising that the environment affects the life processes of organisms, to explaining distribution patterns of organisms in terms of environmental factors and gradients, to applying in novel situations their understanding of the complex interactions that take place between organisms and their environment
move from a focus on simple patterns of genetic inheritance to appreciating the mechanisms by which genes express themselves and the ways in which humans use their understanding of biotechnology to manipulate living organisms
move from recognising that genetic variation is important in a changing environment to focusing on the processes by which allele frequencies alter in response to environmental changes
move from understanding the species concept to focusing on the processes by which new species arise;
move from identifying the impact of humans on a specific ecosystem to appreciating how humans can also affect evolutionary processes via genetic manipulation
from identifying human impacts on a biological situation to developing a reasoned personal viewpoint based on critical thinking around the ethical, social and biological implications of human activities.

Indicators

Indicators are examples of the behaviours and capabilities that a teacher might expect to observe in a student who is achieving at the appropriate level. Teachers may wish to add further examples of their own.

Context elaborations

Context elaborations are possible contexts for learning, with a suggestion of how they might be used with the focus achievement objective.

The listed context elaborations are examples only. Teachers can select and use entirely different contexts in response to local situation, community relevance, and students’ interests and needs.

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NCEA: What has changed?

The achievement standards have been designed to align with the NZC, and reflect the change in direction for science education. Most existing programmes will need to be reshaped to meet the achievement aims for science, and in particular the Nature of Science.
The Nature of Science aims and objectives have been embedded and integrated into all standards.
The explanatory notes for each standard indicate which science achievement objectives are the focus.
Key terms such as investigate, demonstrate understanding and justify are fully explained in the explanatory notes.
The additional information/teacher guideline sections of exemplar resources (internal tasks) provide further guidance around how the nature of science is involved, for example, science 1.6A.
See assessment for qualifications section for each achievement objective. This suggests possible assessment activities related to each particular achievement objective.

Assessment for qualifications

At the time of publication, achievement standards were in development to align them with The New Zealand Curriculum. Please ensure that you are using the correct version of the standards by going to the NZQA website.

The NZQA subject-specific resources pages are very helpful. From there, you can find all the achievement standards and links to assessment resources, both internal and external.

Learn more:

NZQA subject resources for Biology

Aligned level 1 achievement standards were registered for use in 2011 and level 2 for use in 2012; level 3 for use in 2013.

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