Educational potential of teaching evolution as an interdisciplinary science

Abstract

Evolution education continues to struggle with a range of persistent challenges spanning aspects of conceptual understanding, acceptance, and perceived relevance of evolutionary theory by students in general education. This article argues that a gene-centered conceptualization of evolution may precisely contribute to and exacerbate these challenges. Against that background, we also argue that a trait-centered, generalized, and interdisciplinary conceptualization of evolution may hold significant learning potential for addressing some of these persistent challenges facing evolution education. We outline a number of testable hypotheses about the educational value of teaching evolutionary theory from this more generalized and interdisciplinary conception.

Conceptual clarification of evolution as an interdisciplinary science

“…Thus, these views promote a decentralized view of biological systems and apply it to evolutionary (as well as developmental) processes, informed by concepts and methods of systems biology or complexity science. Since one set of challenges in evolution education relates to the difficulty for students to understand this complexity, and resulting notions of genetic determinism or natural selection as an event, this systems view may also be a productive direction for evolution education (see Hanisch & Eirdosh, 2020b).…”

“…Such idealizations may also wrongfully lead educators to the conclusion that the (idealized, abstracted) conceptualizations of evolution of the MS represent a more fundamental truth -such that processes operating in development have no causal role in evolutionary change, no matter what the phenomenon. Such conclusions affect assessment of evolution understanding, in that students who integrate such processes in evolutionary explanation are thought to have misconceptions about how evolutionary changes happen (see Hanisch & Eirdosh, 2020b). Fig.…”

“…We argue that, since an overall aim of education is also this ability to transfer concepts, principles and skills in order to solve novel problems (Stern et al, 2017), there may be opportunities to also engage these different perspectives explicitly in the classroom, thereby potentially targeting a number of challenges in evolution understanding as well as motivational challenges due to perceived relevance of evolution to students lives (Hanisch & Eirdosh, 2020b).…”

“…Of interest to the evolution education community may also be the fact that cultural evolution models for the inheritance and spread of human behavioral, cognitive, cultural traits have challenged the notion that certain traits (such as IQ) have a purely genetic basis (Cavalli- Sforza & Feldmann, 1973). Hence, explicitly integrating the science of cultural evolution may hold potential to also address challenges to evolution understanding and acceptance related to social identity and emotional factors, as well as challenges related to genetic determinism (Hanisch & Eirdosh, 2020b).…”

“…This paper, Hanisch & Eirdosh (2020a), aims to provide evolution educators with a short review of current discourse in evolution science and a conceptual clarification of core concepts in evolutionary theory, in the service of promoting deeper and transferable understanding of these concepts. In Hanisch & Eirdosh (2020b), we outline a set of hypotheses about the educational potential of teaching evolution from a more generalized, interdisciplinary conception, addressing a range of enduring challenges in evolution understanding and acceptance. In Hanisch & Eirdosh (2020c), we provide some examples of current evolution education discourse, educational materials, and assessment tools that represent a number of challenges regarding how evolution is frequently conceptualized in evolution education.…”