A modeling approach to teaching evolutionary biology in high schools*

Abstract

There are numerous empirical reports in the science education literature documenting the difficulty students have in understanding evolution, in particular natural selection. Unfortunately, because of the nature of empirical reports, much detail about the instruction that students in these studies received is seldom provided. In this article we describe the commitments and research that went into the design of a 9‐week high school course in evolutionary biology. This course was designed to bring students to an understanding of the practice of evolutionary biology by engaging them in developing, elaborating, and using one of the discipline's most important explanatory models—Darwin's model of natural selection. This article is not an empirical report on student understanding but is instead a description of our view of what constitutes understanding in evolution and of a curriculum designed from this perspective. Examples of student work are used to add richness to the description of the course as well as to illustrate the potential for sophisticated reasoning that exists when students are given the opportunity and conceptual tools to engage in realistic inquiry. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 39: 185–204, 2002

Exploring the Impact of Students’ Learning Approach on Collaborative Group Modeling of Blood Circulation

“…Researchers employ various definitions of models, including the following: ''simplified representations for explaining and predicting phenomena'' (Harrison and Treagust 2000;Passmore and Stewart 2002;Schwarz et al 2009); ''consensus models based on scientific theories'' (Clement 2008;Treagust et al 2002); ''links between abstract theories and specific experiments'' (Gilbert et al 2000).…”

“…In recent years, modeling has received considerable attention as a useful educational tool in the science classroom (Schwarz et al 2009). In the context of learning science, a model is an explanatory system that represents objects or phenomena via discourse, writing, behavior, and drawing (Harrison and Treagust 2000;Passmore and Stewart 2002;Schwarz and White 2005), while modeling is the process of generating, evaluating, and modifying models in order to create models that closely represent the scientific concepts (Justi and Gilbert 2002;). Both models and modeling play an important role in developing students' understanding of certain phenomena or information as they construct and represent their mental models.…”

Using the logical basis of phylogenetics as the framework for teaching biology

“…The results of deficient learning are the permanence and diffusion of a great roll of problematic issues about evolution and correlated subjects (for examples, see Bishop & Anderson, 1990;Aleijandre, 1994;Settlage, 1994;Zuzovsky, 1994;Demastes et al, 1995Demastes et al, , 1996Jensen & Finley, 1996;Ferrari & Chi, 1998;Thomas, 2000;Anderson et al, 2002;and Passmore & Stewart, 2002). Concepts such as temporal dimension and its consequences to the evolutionary process are commonly misinterpreted, as well as the genealogical relationships among men and other animals, whether humans originated through purely natural processes from other forms of life, and the difference between evolutionary changes, evolutionary novelties and progress.…”

Innovate to Mitigate: Learning as Activity in a Team of High School Students Addressing a Climate Mitigation Challenge

“…These include: engagement with a real world problem (Falk et al, 2010), involvement in an engineering design process that makes authentic practices accessible to learners (Edelson & Reiser, 2006), learning in depth (Roth & Lee, 2003), communicating science findings (Passmore & Stewart, 2002), sustained engagement in "knowledge-building communities" (Scardamalia, 2003), project-based learning (e.g., Barron et al, 1998;Krajcik & Blumenfeld, 2006), and an emphasis on production that leads to higher-order thinking skills (Gee, 2011).…”