Evolution Education in Utah: A State Office of Education–University Partnership Focuses on Why Evolution Matters

Several groups of people are essential for effectively teaching the theory of evolution in public schools. Teachers of course are at the leading edge of educating students. However, school district administrators, school boards, state education officers, and university professors all play critical roles in this endeavor. Whereas scientific discoveries and teacher training typically occur at the university level, it is school district leaders and teachers who actually disseminate this information in a way that creates an educated population of students. In this study, we introduce a partnership focused on strengthening evolution education in Utah’s public schools. Our program centers on the importance of evolution as an applied science and one that can be readily integrated throughout the biology curriculum. Our 2-day workshop—conducted in each Utah school district—brings together elected school board members, school district administrators, public school science teachers, and university professors to overcome barriers that can arise when teaching the theory of evolution as part of the 7–12 public school curriculum.     

An Alternative Approach: Teaching Evolution in a Natural History Museum Through the Topic of Vector-Borne Disease

Museums play a vitally important role in supporting both informal and formal education and are important venues for fostering public understanding of evolution. The Yale Peabody Museum has implemented significant education programs on evolution for many decades, mostly focused on the museum’s extensive collections that represent the past and present tree of life. Twelve years ago, the Peabody began a series of new programs that explored biodiversity and evolution as it relates to human health. Modern evolutionary theory contributes significantly to our understanding of health and disease, and medical topics provide many excellent and relevant examples to explore evolutionary concepts. The Peabody developed a program on vector-borne diseases, specifically Lyme disease and West Nile virus, which have become endemic in the United States. Both of these diseases have complex transmission cycles involving an intricate interplay among the pathogen, host, and vector, each of which is subject to differing evolutionary pressures. Using these stories, the museum explored evolutionary concepts of adaptation (e.g., the evolution of blood feeding), coevolution (e.g., the “arms race” between host and vector), and variation and selection (e.g., antibiotic resistance) among others. The project included a temporary exhibition and the development of curriculum materials for middle and high school teachers and students. The popularity of the exhibit and some formal evaluation of student participants suggested that this educational approach has significant potential to engage wide audiences in evolutionary issues. In addition it demonstrated how natural history museums can incorporate evolution into a broad array of programs.     

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.     

Using Avida-ED for Teaching and Learning About Evolution in Undergraduate Introductory Biology Courses

Evolution is a complex subject that requires knowledge of basic biological concepts and the ability to connect them across multiple scales of time, space, and biological organization. Avida-ED is a digital evolution educational software environment designed for teaching and learning about evolution and the nature of science in undergraduate biology courses. This study describes our backward design approach to developing an instructional activity using Avida-ED for teaching and learning about evolution in a large-enrollment introductory biology course. Using multiple assessment instruments, we measured student knowledge and understanding of key principles of natural selection before and after instruction on evolution (including the Avida-ED activity). Assessment analysis revealed significant post-instruction learning gains, although certain evolutionary principles (most notably those including genetics concepts, such as the genetic origin of variation) remained particularly difficult for students, even after instruction. Students, however, demonstrated a good grasp of the genetic component of the evolutionary process in the context of a problem on Avida-ED. We propose that: (a) deep understanding of evolution requires complex systems thinking skills, such as connecting concepts across multiple levels of biological organization, and (b) well designed use of Avida-ED holds the potential to help learners build a meaningful and transferable understanding of the evolutionary process. An erratum to this article can be found at     

Proposal for Teaching Evolutionary Biology: A bridge between research and educational practice

We present quantitative results for the doctoral thesis of the first-named author of this article. The objective was to recommend and test a teaching proposal for core knowledge of evolutionary biology in secondary education. The focus of the study is ‘Problem cores in teaching’. The ‘Weaving evolutionary thinking’ teaching unit, designed for and tested in this study, entailed: selecting basic evolutionary knowledge from the model of evolution through variation and natural selection; designing a coordinated set of activities, teaching resources and evaluation tools; leading a process of teacher training; and building bridges between: the teaching model, research into the teaching of evolutionary biology, our own teaching experience and that of the secondary school teacher who participated in the project. The data collected through questionnaires show significant differences in favour of the experimental group, which means that the proposal may be favourably assessed in the context of Mexican education, in terms of feasibility, relevance and the pedagogical transformation of knowledge.     

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.     

Accepting evolution

Poor public perceptions and understanding of evolution are not unique to the developed and more industrialized nations of the world. International resistance to the science of evolutionary biology appears to be driven by both proponents of intelligent design and perceived incompatibilities between evolution and a diversity of religious faiths. We assessed the success of a first-year evolution course at the University of Cape Town and discovered no statistically significant change in the views of students before the evolution course and thereafter, for questions that challenged religious ideologies about creation, biodiversity, and intelligent design. Given that students only appreciably changed their views when presented with "facts," we suggest that teaching approaches that focus on providing examples of experimental evolutionary studies, and a strong emphasis on the scientific method of inquiry, are likely to achieve greater success. This study also reiterates the importance of engaging with students' prior conceptions, and makes suggestions for improving an understanding and appreciation of evolutionary biology in countries such as South Africa with an inadequate secondary science education system, and a dire lack of public engagement with issues in science.     

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.     

ASHG activities relative to education: Human genetics as a component of medical school curricula: A report to the American society of human genetics

In recent years, there has been a remarkable increase in both the rate of acquiring new information about human genetics and the importance of human genetics for modern health care. As a result, human genetics educators have queried whether the teaching of human genetics in North-American medical schools has kept pace with these increases. To address this question, a survey of these medical schools was undertaken to assess how human geneticists perceive the teaching of human genetics in their respective institutions. The results of the survey, begun and completed in 1985, indicate the following: (1) the teaching of human genetics in medical schools is extremely variable from one institution to another, with some schools having no identifiable human genetics teaching at all; (2) the relevance of human genetics to other basic science and clinical disciplines apparently leads to noncategorical or fragmented teaching of human genetics, which may also contribute to the absence of a specific medical school course in the subject; and (3) there is a need for closer collaboration between human genetics educators and their respective medical school administrators and curriculum committees.     

Constructing a Cotton-Ball Catapult: An Interdisciplinary STS Learning Experience

The need for all students to develop a stronger ability to express their science knowledge in writing is important. In this article, the authors take you on a journey in an elementary school classroom with tools to help foster deeper learning and stronger writing skills in science content. With many students in high school required to pass end-of-semester science exams to receive a diploma, teaching writing at an early age across various content areas is an even more critical component of today’s curriculum. Presenting curriculum material through multiple means (Universal Design for Learning-Representation) allows students to gain information through a learning approach that best fits the students’ learning needs. The authors examine multiple means of representing science curriculum to engage students in creating detailed and comprehensive concept maps and to provide supportive scientific evidence in written explanations as they gain more content knowledge in science.     

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.     

Abiogenesis in Upper Secondary Biology Curricula

Biological evolution and abiogenesis are distinct branches of science, although they are closely related in the context of a holistic evolutionary conceptual framework. The relationship between evolution and abiogenesis furnishes profound insights into the nature of science, a much emphasised aspect of modern science education. But there appears to be a great deal of ambiguity about the place of abiogenesis in upper secondary curricula, being the stage of formal education at which students are usually first exposed to evolutionary theory in any depth. Some official curricula completely omit any reference to the issue, others fleetingly touch on it, and yet others fully incorporate it. This paper argues that abiogenesis should be included in upper secondary biology curricula, but that students need to be made aware of the distinctions between chemical and biological evolutionary theories.     

Evolution Education: Seeing the Forest for the Trees and Focusing Our Efforts on the Teaching of Evolution

Evolution is the underlying framework upon which all biology is based; however, when it comes to learning evolutionary concepts, many students encounter obstacles. There are many reasons as to why these obstacles occur. These reasons deal with evolution being treated as a discrete topic among many within a biology curriculum, misunderstanding the nature of science, and personal difficulties with understanding due to evolution’s seemingly abstract nature. In this article, we propose a different way of thinking about and teaching evolution in grades K-12, and it surrounds four core areas essential to the understanding of evolution: variation, selection, inheritance, and deep time. Possibilities for how these areas can affect learning are described and implications for assessment are also discussed.     

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.     

Developing a Curriculum for Evolutionary Medicine: Case Studies of Scurvy and Female Reproductive Tract Cancers

Most early evolutionary thinkers came from medicine, yet evolution has had a checkered history in medical education. It is only in the last few decades that serious efforts have begun to be made to integrate evolutionary biology into the medical curriculum. However, it is not clear when, where (independently or as part of preclinical or clinical teaching courses) and, most importantly, how should medical students learn the basic principles of evolutionary biology applied to medicine, known today as evolutionary or Darwinian medicine. Most clinicians are ill-prepared to teach evolutionary biology and most evolutionary biologists ill-equipped to formulate clinical examples. Yet, if evolutionary science is to have impact on clinical thought, then teaching material that embeds evolution within the clinical framework must be developed. In this paper, we use two clinical case studies to demonstrate how such may be used to teach evolutionary medicine to medical students in a way that is approachable as well as informative and relevant.     

A Missing Link: K-4 Biological Evolution Content Standards

The National Science Education Standards (NSES) is one of the most influential documents in US science education. The NSES has been utilized by local schools and districts, state departments of education, and national curriculum groups to form the backbone for curriculum frameworks, programs, and assessment systems to guide science education. The NSES provides national biological evolution content standards for fifth grade through high school but not for kindergarten through fourth grade. This article presents K-4 biological evolution content standards that can be used in conjunction with the current NSES K-4 life science and earth science content standards, brief examples of integration activities using the K-4 biological evolution content standards, and supplemental teacher information for the K-4 biological evolution content standards. The biological evolution content standards and the additional materials can guide teachers when teaching biological evolution to K-4th grade students.     

An innovative biology course for first-year university students in Australia

The course ‘Biology of Mankind’ was introduced into the University of New South Wales for first-year students from any faculty wishing to take biology. All students, regardless of their previous background in biology or their reasons for taking the course, followed the same syllabus. Biological principles were taught in the context of the evolution of man in relation to his environment; the importance of scientific methods for the study of these interactions was emphasized. At the beginning of their university studies students were introduced to the relevance of biology for an understanding of many related disciplines. The course represented an educational innovation in both content and teaching methods. It sought to develop some independence in student learning as preparation for subsequent years. The development of the course and its evaluation over a three-year period are reviewed.     

Evolutionary Developmental Biology and Human Language Evolution: Constraints on Adaptation

A tension has long existed between those biologists who emphasize the importance of adaptation by natural selection and those who highlight the role of phylogenetic and developmental constraints on organismal form and function. This contrast has been particularly noticeable in recent debates concerning the evolution of human language. Darwin himself acknowledged the existence and importance of both of these, and a long line of biologists have followed him in seeing, in the concept of ??descent with modification??, a framework naturally able to incorporate both adaptation and constraint. Today, the integrated perspective of modern evolutionary developmental biology (??evo-devo??) allows a more subtle and pluralistic approach to these traditional questions, and has provided several examples where the traditional notion of ??constraint?? can be cashed out in specific, mechanistic terms. This integrated viewpoint is particularly relevant to the evolution of the multiple mechanisms underlying human language, because of the short time available for novel aspects of these mechanisms to evolve and be optimized. Comparative data indicate that many cognitive aspects of human language predate humans, suggesting that pre-adaptation and exaptation have played important roles in language evolution. Thus, substantial components of what many linguists call ??Universal Grammar?? predate language itself. However, at least some of these older mechanisms have been combined in ways that generate true novelty. I suggest that we can insightfully exploit major steps forward in our understanding of evolution and development, to gain a richer understanding of the principles that underlie human language evolution.     

Lessons from EEO: Toward a Universal Evolutionary Curriculum

We propose a human-centered evolutionary curriculum based around the three questions: Who am I? Where do I come from? How do I fit in? We base our curriculum on our experiences as an evolutionary biologist/paleontologist (NE) and as a secondary level special education science teacher (GE)—and not least from our joint experience as co-editors-in-chief of this journal. Our proposed curriculum starts and ends with human biology and evolution, linking these themes with topics as diverse as the “tree of life” (systematics), anthropology, Charles Darwin, cultural evolution, ecology, developmental biology, molecular evolution/genetics, paleontology, and plate tectonics. The curriculum is “universal” as it is designed to be taught at all levels, K–16. The curriculum is flexible: “modules” may be expanded and contracted, reordered, or modified to fit specific grade level needs—and the requirements and interests of local curricula and teachers. We further propose that students utilize workbooks from online or printed sources to investigate the local answers to the general questions (e.g., “Who am I?”), while classroom instruction is focused on the larger scale issues outlined in the modules of our curriculum.     

Evolution and Medicine: An Inquiry-Based High School Curriculum Supplement

Evolution and Medicine is a curriculum supplement designed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS) for high school students. The supplement is freely available from NIH’s Office of Science Education (OSE) as a part of the NIH curriculum supplement series. Development of the supplement was a collaborative effort that included input from a panel of experts in medicine, evolution, education, and educational technology. In total, the curriculum supplement includes five inquiry-based lessons that are integrated into the BSCS 5E instructional model (based on constructivist learning theory). The goal was to develop a 2-week curriculum to help students understand major concepts of evolution using the dynamic, modern, and relevant context of medicine. A diverse group of students and teachers across the US participated in a formative evaluation of a field test version of the curriculum. High school students made significant learning gains from pretest to posttest, with a relatively large effect size for student understanding of common ancestry and a relatively small effect size for student understanding of natural selection. There was no statistically significant difference in achievement gains between white students and all other racial/ethnic categories. Overall, the evaluation suggests that a curriculum that emphasizes the role of evolution in medicine, uses a constructivist instructional model, and is grounded in inquiry is relatively well-received by teachers and students and shows promise for increasing student learning in evolution.