The excess of curriculum content is a well-known problem in high school biology. Some strategies to adjust the amount of content to the available classroom time have been proposed, but none has been widely accepted and applied. Furthermore, biology is frequently presented in high school not as an integrated science, but as a collection of unrelated sub-areas, say, zoology, botany, physiology, genetics, and evolution. In this paper, we advance a proposal on how to develop non-arbitrary, clear criteria for selecting conceptual content to be taught and learnt in order to make the biology high school curriculum more integrated and less loaded with content. We argue that we should adopt the idea of structuring concepts for seizing the prominent role some ideas play in biological thinking. We discuss how a hierarchical conceptual framework of biology can help us to identify key concepts as well as connections between these concepts that can allow students understand sub-areas of biology. We also advocate for establishing a balance between the concepts from functional and evolutionary biology, on the one hand, and concepts representing (i) systemic components, (ii) processes, and (iii) descriptive elements, on the other hand. Finally we exemplify how these criteria can be applied by providing a proposal for structuring concepts of biology as a whole and the theory of evolution in particular.

中文翻译：

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我们应该如何选择生物高中课程的概念性内容？

课程内容过多是高中生物的一个众所周知的问题。已经提出了一些根据可用课堂时间调整内容量的策略，但都没有被广泛接受和应用。此外，生物学在高中经常不是作为一门综合科学呈现，而是作为一个不相关的子领域的集合，比如动物学、植物学、生理学、遗传学和进化。在本文中，我们提出了一个建议，即如何为选择要教授和学习的概念性内容制定非武断的、明确的标准，以使高中生物课程更加综合且内容更少。我们认为，我们应该采用结构化概念的思想，以抓住某些思想在生物学思维中的突出作用。我们讨论生物学的分层概念框架如何帮助我们识别关键概念以及这些概念之间的联系，从而使学生能够理解生物学的子领域。我们还主张在一方面来自功能和进化生​​物学的概念与代表 (i) 系统组件、(ii) 过程和 (iii) 描述性元素的概念之间建立平衡。最后，我们通过提供一个建议来构建整个生物学概念，特别是进化论，来举例说明如何应用这些标准。一方面，概念代表 (i) 系统组成部分，(ii) 过程，以及 (iii) 描述性元素，另一方面。最后，我们通过提供一个建议来构建整个生物学概念，特别是进化论，来举例说明如何应用这些标准。一方面，概念代表 (i) 系统组成部分，(ii) 过程，以及 (iii) 描述性元素，另一方面。最后，我们通过提供一个建议来构建整个生物学概念，特别是进化论，来举例说明如何应用这些标准。