Evolution and medicine in undergraduate education: a prescription for all biology students

The interface between evolutionary biology and the biomedical sciences promises to advance understanding of the origins of genetic and infectious diseases in humans, potentially leading to improved medical diagnostics, therapies, and public health practices. The biomedical sciences also provide unparalleled examples for evolutionary biologists to explore. However, gaps persist between evolution and medicine, for historical reasons and because they are often perceived as having disparate goals. Evolutionary biologists have a role in building a bridge between the disciplines by presenting evolutionary biology in the context of human health and medical practice to undergraduates, including premedical and preprofessional students. We suggest that students will find medical examples of evolution engaging. By making the connections between evolution and medicine clear at the undergraduate level, the stage is set for future health providers and biomedical scientists to work productively in this synthetic area. Here, we frame key evolutionary concepts in terms of human health, so that biomedical examples may be more easily incorporated into evolution courses or more specialized courses on evolutionary medicine. Our goal is to aid in building the scientific foundation in evolutionary biology for all students, and to encourage evolutionary biologists to join in the integration of evolution and medicine.     

A Clinical Perspective in Evolutionary Medicine: What We Wish We Had Learned in Medical School

Medical students have much to gain by understanding how evolutionary principles affect human health and disease. Many theoretical and experimental studies have applied lessons from evolutionary biology to issues of critical importance to medical science. A firm grasp of evolution and natural selection is required to understand why the human body remains vulnerable to many diseases. Although we often integrate evolutionary concepts when we teach medical students and residents, the vast majority of medical students never receive any instruction on evolution. As a result, many trainees lack the tools to understand key advances and miss valuable opportunities for education and research. Here, we outline some of the evolutionary principles that we wished we had learned during our medical training.     

You say you want an evolution? A role for scientists in science education

We conducted a national survey of likely U.S. voters to examine acceptance of evolution, attitudes toward science and scientists, and opportunities for promoting science education. Most respondents accepted that life evolved, many accepted that it evolved through natural processes, and more favored teaching evolution than creationism or intelligent design in science classes. The majority ranked developing medicines and curing diseases as the most important contributions of science to society, and they found promoting understanding of evolutionary science's contribution to medicine to be a convincing reason to teach evolution. Respondents viewed scientists, teachers, and medical professionals favorably, and most were interested in hearing from these groups about science, including evolution. These data suggest that the scientific community has an important role to play in encouraging public support for science education.     

Evolutionary Medicine: A Key to Introducing Evolution

Science teachers can use examples and concepts from evolutionary medicine to teach the three concepts central to evolution: common descent, the processes or mechanisms of evolution, and the patterns produced by descent with modification. To integrate medicine into common ancestry, consider how the evolutionary past of our (or any) species affects disease susceptibility. That humans are bipedal has produced substantial changes in our musculoskeletal system, as well as causing problems for childbirth. Mechanisms such as natural selection are well exemplified in evolutionary medicine, as both disease-causing organism and their targets adapt to one another. Teachers often use examples such as antibiotic resistance to teach natural selection: it takes little alteration of the lesson plan to make explicit that evolution is key to understanding the principles involved. Finally, the pattern of evolution can be illustrated through evolutionary medicine because organisms sharing closer ancestry also share greater susceptibility to the same disease-causing organisms. Teaching evolution using examples from evolutionary medicine can make evolution more interesting and relevant to students, and quite probably, more acceptable as a valid science.     

Stomata: Versatile Sensory Devices but Difficult Experimental Subjects

This study examined what worldviews are present among Dutch students and teachers and how the students cope with scientific knowledge acquired in the biology classroom. Furthermore, we investigated what learning and teaching strategies teachers adopt when they teach about evolution and worldviews. For this survey, 10 schools for higher general secondary education or pre-university level were selected. The data showed that most teachers did not have an articulated learning and teaching strategy. Controversial topics and discussions with students about their own worldviews were ignored in the classroom. Furthermore, the data revealed that students and teachers have a large variety of different worldviews. Some students acknowledged having difficulties coping with the knowledge gained from the classroom, because it contradicted their own worldviews. These results support our hypothesis that there is need for an explicit learning and teaching strategy that supports both teachers and students to teach and learn about evolution in multiple contexts.     

Awareness and Acceptance of Evolution and Evolutionary Medicine Among Medical Students in Pakistan

Evolutionary medicine is a perspective on medical sciences derived through application of theory of evolution to aid in therapeutics. This study sought to determine the level of knowledge and acceptance of evolutionary theory in medical students along with their attitude toward teaching evolutionary medicine as a part of their undergraduate course. Factors that are likely to cause difficulty in teaching evolutionary medicine were also identified. A cross-sectional study was carried out at Army Medical College, National University of Sciences and Technology, Pakistan in which 299 medical students were selected by nonprobability convenient sampling technique to participate in the study. Participants’ views were obtained by a structured questionnaire comprised of three sections: appreciation of evolutionary medicine, acceptance of evolutionary theory, knowledge of evolutionary theory. Medical students had a low acceptance [mean measure of acceptance of theory of evolution (MATE) = 58.32] and a low knowledge (mean score of 5.20 out of a total ten marks). Students believed that religious beliefs, lack of resources, and an existent extensive medical curriculum would cause difficulty in imparting such an education despite its potential to improve medical research and clinical practice. Only 37.2% agreed that the subject should be taught in medical schools as an individual subject.     

Selection and Evolution with a Deck of Cards

Imparting a basic understanding of evolutionary principles to students in an active, engaging fashion can be troublesome because the logistics involved in designing experiments where students pose their own questions and use the data to test alternative hypotheses often outstrip time and financial constraints. In recent years, educators have begun publishing exercises that teach evolution using innovative, in-class experiments. This article adds to this growing forum by describing a classroom exercise that introduces the concept of evolution by natural selection in a hypothesis-driven, experimental fashion, using a deck of cards. Our standard exercise is suitable for upper-level high school and introductory biology students at the college level. In this paper, we discuss the exercise in detail and give several examples that illustrate how our games provide accessible bridges to the primary literature. Finally, we discuss how extensions of our basic exercise can be used to effectively teach advanced evolutionary concepts.     

Evolution and nature of science instruction

In this article, I provide an analysis of my work (1985–present) with non-major biology students and science teacher candidates in developing strategies for teaching and enhancing learning with respect to evolutionary science. This first-person account describes changes in evolution instruction over the course of a career based on personal experiences, research-informed practices, and a critical collaboration with colleague Mike U. Smith. I assert four insights concerning the influence and efficacy of teaching nature of science (NOS) prior to the introduction of evolution within college courses for science non-majors and science teacher candidates. These insights are: (a) teach explicit NOS principles first; (b) integrate evolution as a theme throughout a course in introductory biology (but after NOS principles have been introduced); (c) use active learning pedagogies; and (d) use non-threatening alternative assessments to enhance student learning and acceptance of evolutionary science. Together, these insights establish a pedagogy that I (and my colleagues) have found to be efficacious for supporting novice students as they engage in the study of evolutionary science.     

Evolutionary Medicine and the Medical School Curriculum: Meeting Students Along Their Paths to Medical School

Over the past several years, numerous reports that have been independently prepared by prestigious organizations in the U.S. have agreed that new approaches to improve teaching and learning of biology at both the pre-college and undergraduate levels are important and timely. Their recommendations, which are based on emerging research about human learning and cognition, are in agreement that evolution is an organizing principle and foundation of modern biology and should be presented as such. This paper provides an overview of the conclusions and recommendations from those reports and proposes that helping students learn evolution through the lens of human examples that are part of the emerging field of evolutionary medicine could help biology educators improve the teaching of evolution, and biology more generally, by asking students to address biological problems that are inherently interesting and motivating.     

Teaching Tree-Thinking to Undergraduate Biology Students

Evolution is the unifying principle of all biology, and understanding how evolutionary relationships are represented is critical for a complete understanding of evolution. Phylogenetic trees are the most conventional tool for displaying evolutionary relationships, and “tree-thinking” has been coined as a term to describe the ability to conceptualize evolutionary relationships. Students often lack tree-thinking skills, and developing those skills should be a priority of biology curricula. Many common student misconceptions have been described, and a successful instructor needs a suite of tools for correcting those misconceptions. I review the literature on teaching tree-thinking to undergraduate students and suggest how this material can be presented within an inquiry-based framework.     

Sleep as a teaching tool for integrating respiratory physiology and motor control

Sleep exerts major effects on most fundamental homeostatic mechanisms. Current data suggest, however, that students of physiology and medicine typically receive little or no formal teaching in sleep. Because sleep takes up a significant component of our life span, it is proposed that current teaching in systems and integrative physiology is not representative if it is confined to functions describing wakefulness only. We propose that sleep can be readily integrated into various components of physiology and medical curricula simply by emphasizing how commonly taught physiological processes are importantly affected by sleep mechanisms. In our experience, this approach can be used to reinforce basic physiological principles while simultaneously introducing sleep physiology into the students' training. We find that students have a general and inherent interest in sleep and related clinical disorders, and this proves useful as an effective means to teach the material. In this paper, examples of how sleep influences motor control and the respiratory system will illustrate these points. These considerations also highlight some important gaps in traditional teaching of respiratory physiology.     

An exploration of instructor perceptions of community college students’ attitudes towards evolution

Background

Faculty perception of student knowledge and acceptance of subject matter affects the choice of what to teach and how to teach it. Accurate assessment of student acceptance of evolution, then, is relevant to how the subject should be taught. To explore the accuracy of such assessment, we compared how community college instructors of life sciences courses perceive students’ attitudes towards evolution with those students’ actual attitudes towards evolution.

Results

The research had two components: (1) a survey of students of several biology classes at a community college about their acceptance of evolutionary theory and (2) interviews with the biology faculty teaching those classes about their perceptions of their students’ attitudes towards evolution. Results of the study indicate relatively high levels of acceptance of evolution among community college students at this West Coast institution. We also found that community college instructors of life sciences courses varied in accuracy of their perceptions of their students’ attitudes towards evolution–but not systematically. Although one professor assessed each class quite accurately, the other two professors frequently underestimated the acceptance of evolution among their students.

Conclusions

Errors in perception seemed independent of whether the class was composed of majors, nonmajors, or a combination. Clearly, in our sample there is much idiosyncrasy regarding community college instructor accuracy concerning student opinions about evolution.

     

The teaching house officer

Although medical students on clinical ward rotations receive a large part of their education from house officers, very often house officers themselves have had little formal preparation as teachers. Because students and teachers work closely together under special conditions, unique educational situations are created where much more than factual information is conveyed. Although some house officers are "natural" teachers, others find such activities uncomfortable or burdensome. Most people, however, can be taught to be effective teachers, and preparation for teaching and teaching itself are beneficial for house officers and their patients as well as their students. House officers who teach enjoy the rewards that all teachers know as well as several others which are particular to the setting in which they teach. Mechanisms are suggested to maintain and develop interest in house staff teaching.     

How to Identify and Interpret Evolutionary Tree Diagrams

Evolutionary trees are key tools for modern biology and are commonly portrayed in textbooks to promote learning about biological evolution. However, many people have difficulty in understanding what evolutionary trees are meant to portray. In fact, some ideas that current professional biologists depict with evolutionary trees are neither clearly defined nor conveyed to students. To help biology teachers and students learn how to more deeply interpret, understand and gain knowledge from diagrams that represent ancestor–descendant relationships and evolutionary lineages, we describe the different rooted and unrooted evolutionary tree visualisations and explain how they are best read. Examples from a study of tree-shaped diagrams in the journal Science are used to illustrate how to distinguish evolutionary trees from other tree-shaped representations that are easily misunderstood as visualising evolutionary relationships. We end by making recommendations for how our findings may be implemented in teaching practice in this important area of biology education.     

军校预防医学专业本科学员临床课程教学现状及建议

随着医学模式的转变,预防医学已经成为现代医疗体系的重要组成部分,在提高公共卫生健康水平方面发挥着越来越重要的作用。为了更好地开展预防医学工作,预防医学专业学员不仅要掌握牢固的预防医学专业知识,更要具备丰富的临床医学知识。针对预防医学专业本科学员的临床课程教学,我校经过多年的探索与改革,已经积累了丰富经验,教学质量较高;但现阶段仍然存在着一些问题。本文分析我校预防医学专业本科学员临床课程的教学现状及存在的主要问题,并提出建议;从而为进一步提高预防医学专业本科学员的临床课程教学质量提供依据。     

Students’ Mental Models of Evolutionary Causation: Natural Selection and Genetic Drift

In an effort to understand how to improve student learning about evolution, a focus of science education research has been to document and address students?? naive ideas. Less research has investigated how students reason about alternative scientific models that attempt to explain the same phenomenon (e.g., which causal model best accounts for evolutionary change?). Within evolutionary biology, research has yet to explore how non-adaptive factors are situated within students?? conceptual ecologies of evolutionary causation. Do students construct evolutionary explanations that include non-adaptive and adaptive factors? If so, how are non-adaptive factors structured within students?? evolutionary explanations? We used clinical interviews and two paper and pencil instruments (one open-response and one multiple-choice) to investigate the use of non-adaptive and adaptive factors in undergraduate students?? patterns of evolutionary reasoning. After instruction that included non-adaptive causal factors (e.g., genetic drift), we found them to be remarkably uncommon in students?? explanatory models of evolutionary change in both written assessments and clinical interviews. However, consistent with many evolutionary biologists?? explanations, when students used non-adaptive factors they were conceptualized as causal alternatives to selection. Interestingly, use of non-adaptive factors was not associated with greater understanding of natural selection in interviews or written assessments, or with fewer naive ideas of natural selection. Thus, reasoning using non-adaptive factors appears to be a distinct facet of evolutionary thinking. We propose a theoretical framework for an expert?Cnovice continuum of evolutionary reasoning that incorporates both adaptive and non-adaptive factors, and can be used to inform instructional efficacy in evolutionary biology.     

Losing Sight of Regressive Evolution

When we teach evolution to our students, we tend to focus on “constructive” evolution, the processes which lead to the development of novel or modified structures. Most biology students are familiar with the subjects of finches’ beaks, giraffes’ necks, and hair in mammals. Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with a constructivist approach to teaching evolution, but if it is our only focus, we may overlook the flip side of the coin. By the flip side of the coin, of course, we are referring to regressive evolution: the loss or degeneration of a trait. Regressive evolution does not often make its way into biology textbooks, but it is of great relevance nonetheless. In all likelihood, when a new trait evolves or an existing one is modified, something is sacrificed in return. In order to develop a flipper, a marine mammal must sacrifice individual digits. You may be familiar with one or more of the following familiar characters lost through regressive evolution: teeth in birds, scales in mammals, and tails in higher primates. For aficionados of cave biology like us, one of the most interesting examples of regressive evolution concerns cave fish: Why do cave fish lose their eyes?     

Teaching evolution (and all of biology) more effectively: Strategies for engagement, critical reasoning, and confronting misconceptions

The strength of the evidence supporting evolution has increased markedly since the discovery of DNA but, paradoxically, public resistance to accepting evolution seems to have become stronger. A key dilemma is that science faculty have often continued to teach evolution ineffectively, even as the evidence that traditional ways of teaching are inferior has become stronger and stronger. Three pedagogical strategies that together can make a large difference in students' understanding and acceptance of evolution are extensive use of interactive engagement, a focus on critical thinking in science (especially on comparisons and explicit criteria) and using both of these in helping the students actively compare their initial conceptions (and publicly popular misconceptions) with more fully scientific conceptions. The conclusion that students' misconceptions must be dealt with systematically can be difficult for faculty who are teaching evolution since much of the students' resistance is framed in religious terms and one might be reluctant to address religious ideas in class. Applications to teaching evolution are illustrated with examples that address criteria and critical thinking, standard geology versus flood geology, evolutionary developmental biology versus organs of extreme perfection, and the importance of using humans as a central example. It is also helpful to bridge the false dichotomy, seen by many students, between atheistic evolution versus religious creationism. These applications are developed in detail and are intended to be sufficient to allow others to use these approaches in their teaching. Students and other faculty were quite supportive of these approaches as implemented in my classes.     

八年制医学生妇产科临床实习教学法探讨

八年制医学生临床实习是理论应用于临床实践的过程,是八年制医学生教学的重点。传统”填鸭式”的教学方法限制了八年制医学生的进一步发展,不能满足高素质教育的要求。PBL教学法是以问题为基础的教学方法。大多研究表明,PBL影响知识的应用而不影响知识的获得,而EBM一循证医学的思维恰好是医学生获取知识的最佳指导思想。本文将PBL教学法和EBM思维结合到八年制医学生妇产科实际临床教学中发现,虽然在理论考试成绩上无明显差异,但在临床病例分析能力、临床证据采集能力、教学方式满意程度等方面均优于仅用PBL或者是仅用EBM的教学组。PBL教学法联合EBM思维更能提高八年制医学生分析问题、解决问题的能力,值得进一步推广应用。     

A first attempt to bring computational biology into advanced high school biology classrooms

Computer science has become ubiquitous in many areas of biological research, yet most high school and even college students are unaware of this. As a result, many college biology majors graduate without adequate computational skills for contemporary fields of biology. The absence of a computational element in secondary school biology classrooms is of growing concern to the computational biology community and biology teachers who would like to acquaint their students with updated approaches in the discipline. We present a first attempt to correct this absence by introducing a computational biology element to teach genetic evolution into advanced biology classes in two local high schools. Our primary goal was to show students how computation is used in biology and why a basic understanding of computation is necessary for research in many fields of biology. This curriculum is intended to be taught by a computational biologist who has worked with a high school advanced biology teacher to adapt the unit for his/her classroom, but a motivated high school teacher comfortable with mathematics and computing may be able to teach this alone. In this paper, we present our curriculum, which takes into consideration the constraints of the required curriculum, and discuss our experiences teaching it. We describe the successes and challenges we encountered while bringing this unit to high school students, discuss how we addressed these challenges, and make suggestions for future versions of this curriculum.We believe that our curriculum can be a valuable seed for further development of computational activities aimed at high school biology students. Further, our experiences may be of value to others teaching computational biology at this level. Our curriculum can be obtained at http://ecsite.cs.colorado.edu/?page_id=149#biology or by contacting the authors.