Teaching evolution using historical arguments in a conceptual change strategy

Abstract

A historically rich teaching intervention was developed for biological evolution with the intent of promoting a conceptual change from students' initial understanding to a more Darwinian understanding. The intervention was delivered in a small group setting to underprepared, entry-level biology students. Evaluation of the treatment, using pre-post testing, was used to document the general effectiveness of the intervention and specific changes in students' conceptions of evolution. Results indicate the use of historical materials in conjunction with a conceptual change strategy to be promising. Specific strengths and weaknesses in specific areas of biological evolution are documented. 0 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. OVERVIEW PurposeThe teaching of Darwinian evolution is critical to understanding modern biology, yet it has been shown to be quite difficult (Bishop & Anderson, 1990;Brumby, 1984;Clough & Wood-Robinson, 1985; HalldCn, 1988; Smith et al., in press). This study is the evaluation of an intervention in the teaching of evolution. The intent was to conduct an ecologically valid study by examining the effects of the intervention within the time limits of a typical introductory biology course for underprepared students. The intervention was the teaching of ideas that have been important in the history of evolutionary thought in a way that meets the conditions for learning given in conceptual change theory. The intervention was done in a laboratory session associated with a biology course for nonscience majors. The evaluation was conducted as an in-depth examination of the changes in the students' knowledge that were associated with the intervention. The overall thesis of this study was that if instruction recapitulated events in the development of the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection, then students would replace their initial conceptions with more Darwinian conceptions.

Relationship between achievement and students' acceptance of evolution or creation in an upper‐level evolution course

“…Previous experience suggests that these departures from the normal format of an evolution course result in greater learning, although we have not tested this hypothesis or the question of which specific interventions we use affect students' learning and acceptance of evolution. However, similar interventions have been shown to be successful in enhancing students' learning of evolution (Jensen & Finley, 1995;Scharmann, 1990), so we assume that our approaches would yield similar results if examined individually. Therefore, we suggest that our redesigned pedagogy positively affects students' acceptance of evolution and reduces or eliminates the influence of students' religious beliefs or prior acceptance of evolution on achievement.…”

Development and evaluation of the conceptual inventory of natural selection

“…Alternative conceptions about evolution exist even among the well-educated, including medical students (Brumby, 1984) and physics doctoral students (Chan, 1998). Other sources focus on how to teach evolution (e.g., Jensen & Finley, 1995;Tabak & Reiser, 1997). The National Academy of Sciences's book, Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science (1998), is especially helpful in this area.…”

On Developing Content‐oriented Theories Taking Biological Evolution as an Example

“…They preferred alternatives referring to need, health and strength. Jensen and Finley (1995) found, however, that the students learnt the scientific meaning of fitness without much difficulty.…”

“…That adaptation is a difficult concept to learn when being taught the theory of evolution by natural selection has been documented for many different languages (Baalmann, Frerichs & Illner, 1998;Bizzo, 1994;Brumby, 1981;Engel Clough & Wood-Robinson, 1985a;Halldén, 1988;Jensen & Finley, 1995;Jungwirth, 1975;Thomas, 2000). One reason may be that this term is used for both everyday and scientific concepts (Brumby 1981).…”