This article discusses the efficacy of the peer-led team-learning, or PLTL, instructional model as a potential method for narrowing the achievement gap among undergraduate students electing not to enroll in an optional laboratory component of an introductory biology course.
A b s t r a c tStudents who enter college with a solid grounding in, and positive attitudes toward, evolutionary science are better prepared fo r and achieve at higher levels in university-level biology courses. We found highly significant, positive relation ships between student knowledge of evolution and attitudes toward evolution, as well as between introductory biology course achievement and both precourse acceptance of evolution and precourse knowledge of evolution, among students at a medium-sized private northeastern university. Teachers who scant the teaching of evolution or who do not foster good attitudes toward evolution are compro mising their students' potential fo r success in science at the college level.K e y w o r d s
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