A systematic analysis of the literature undertaken to identify gaps in collective knowledge for teaching undergraduate evolution is reported. A total of 316 peer-reviewed papers were analyzed to determine: evolutionary topics addressed; whether the focus was student thinking, assessment, instructional strategies, or goals; and the type of work. Future research priorities are proposed.
What knowledge do you need to be an effective instructor? One key type of knowledge is pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), which includes awareness of how students are likely to think about a topic and where they will struggle as they learn that topic. We propose PCK as a valuable framework for reflecting on your own knowledge for teaching topics in evolution. We have created a searchable file that uses PCK as a framework to organize over 400 peer-reviewed papers from 40+ journals to give you better access to relevant resources for teaching evolution to undergraduates and advanced high school students. None of us have time to read 400 papers to inform our teaching, so we provide tips to maximize your use of this collective knowledge in the time you have available. We have written these to be useful to instructors across career stages.
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