Adding Behavior to Thinking about Structures & Functions

SBF thinking involves considering the different levels of a system in terms of Structures, Behaviors, and Functions (SBF), and how these are interconnected. This is in contrast to many approaches to biology that often have students learning the vocabulary of structures without an understanding of what the structures do and the processes that help them achieve their functions. In brief, SBF thinking encourages students to simultaneously make explicit the structures (the parts of a system), the behaviors (the "how" or mechanisms of a system), and functions (the "why" of a system).