Nothing in Evolution Makes Sense Except in the Light of DNA

Kalinowski, Steven T.; Leonard, Mary J.; Andrews, Tessa M.

doi:10.1187/cbe.09-12-0088

Cited by 43 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…There are indications that threshold concepts include abstract concepts that are not necessarily specific to natural selection, but vital for grasping its principles, and these concepts must be pointed out in parallel with the key concepts of natural selection. Concepts that may hinder the learning of natural selection include temporal scale (Catley and Novick 2009;Cheek 2012), spatial scale (Kalinowski et al 2010), probability, and randomness (Garvin-Doxas and Klymkowsky 2008; Mead and Scott 2010;Robson and Burns 2011). Ross et al (2010) have also proposed several biological concepts that they distinguish from being only biological concepts because they concern more fundamental and general aspects of natural science.…”

Section: Threshold Concepts For Understanding the Principles And Key mentioning

confidence: 99%

Biological Principles and Threshold Concepts for Understanding Natural Selection

2017

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Modern evolutionary theory is both a central theory and an integrative framework of the life sciences. This is reflected in the common references to evolution in modern science education curricula and contexts. In fact, evolution is a core idea that is supposed to support biology learning by facilitating the organization of relevant knowledge. In addition, evolution can function as a pivotal link between concepts and highlight similarities in the complexity of biological concepts. However, empirical studies in many countries have for decades identified deficiencies in students' scientific understanding of evolution mainly focusing on natural selection. Clearly, there are major obstacles to learning natural selection, and we argue that to overcome them, it is essential to address explicitly the general abstract concepts that underlie the biological processes, e.g., randomness or probability. Hence, we propose a twodimensional framework for analyzing and structuring teaching of natural selection. The first-purely biological-dimension embraces the three main principles variation, heredity, and selection structured in nine key concepts that form the core idea of natural selection. The second dimension encompasses four so-called thresholds, i.e., general abstract and/or nonperceptual concepts: randomness, probability, spatial scales, and temporal scales. We claim that both of these dimensions must be continuously considered, in tandem, when teaching evolution in order to allow development of a meaningful understanding of the process. Further, we suggest that making the thresholds tangible with the aid of appropriate kinds of visualizations will facilitate grasping of the threshold concepts, and thus, help learners to overcome the difficulties in understanding the central theory of life. Sci & Educ (2017) 26:953-973 https://doi

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Section: Threshold Concepts For Understanding the Principles And Key mentioning

confidence: 99%

Biological Principles and Threshold Concepts for Understanding Natural Selection

2017

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“…Educators and researchers have made many calls for instruction that teaches for conceptual change (Bransford et al 2000;Alters and Nelson 2002;Hestenes 1979;Kalinowski et al 2010;Nelson 2008). Biology instructors are beginning to answer this call for classroom and lab activities (Heitz et al 2010;Kalinowski et al 2006a, b), but there are still too few TCC activities for introductory biology courses.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Are Humans Evolving?” A Classroom Discussion to Change Student Misconceptions Regarding Natural Selection

2011

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Natural selection is an important mechanism in the unifying biological theory of evolution, but many undergraduate students struggle to learn this concept. Students enter introductory biology courses with predictable misconceptions about natural selection, and traditional teaching methods, such as lecturing, are unlikely to dispel these misconceptions. Instead, students are more likely to learn natural selection when they are engaged in instructional activities specifically designed to change misconceptions. Three instructional strategies useful for changing student conceptions include (1) eliciting naïve conceptions from students, (2) challenging nonscientific conceptions, and (3) emphasizing conceptual frameworks throughout instruction. In this paper, we describe a classroom discussion of the question "Are humans evolving?" that employs these three strategies for teaching students how natural selection operates. Our assessment of this activity shows that it successfully elicits students' misconceptions and improves student understanding of natural selection. Seventy-eight percent of our students who began this exercise with misconceptions were able to partially or completely change their misconceptions by the end of this discussion. The course that this activity was part of also showed significant learning gains (d = 1.48) on the short form of the Conceptual Inventory of Natural Selection. This paper includes all the background information, data, and visual aids an instructor will need to implement this activity.

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“…The relevance of understanding the random genetic mechanisms for solid evolutionary knowledge is further developed in succeeding sections and has previously been emphasized by several authors (e.g. Garvin-Doxas & Klymkowsky, 2008;Kalinowski, Leonard & Andrews, 2010;Robson & Burns, 2011;Tibell & Harms, 2017).…”

Section: Evolutionary Explanations For Antibiotic Resistancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The lesson that DNA is a molecule that unifies all life and that genetic mutations cause new variation among all living organisms is nevertheless crucial if students are expected to transfer the general mechanisms of evolution to different organisms (Kalinowski, Leonard & Andrews, 2010). Needless to say, this could not be accomplished through a couple of lessons focusing strictly on bacteria, but would need a longer, well-developed course including multiple examples from animals, plants and bacteria.…”

Section: Potential Of Using a Bacterial Context In Evolution Teachingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, all living species share common characteristics on the molecular level, with DNA as the hereditary material that is transcribed and translated into proteins through similar mechanisms across all taxa. This tenet provides an important foundation for understanding evolution (Kalinowski, Leonard & Andrews, 2010).…”

Section: Potential Of Using a Bacterial Context In Evolution Teachingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Evolving germs – Antibiotic resistance and natural selection in education and public communication

Bohlin¹

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Bacterial resistance to antibiotics threatens modern healthcare on a global scale. Several actors in society, including the general public, must become more involved if this development is to be countered. The conveyance of relevant information provided through education and media reports is therefore of high concern. Antibiotic resistance evolves through the mechanisms of natural selection; in this way, a sound understanding of these mechanisms underlies explanations of causes and the development of effective risk-reduction measures. In addition to natural selection functioning as an explanatory framework to antibiotic resistance, bacterial resistance as a context seems to possess a number of qualities that make it suitable for teaching natural selection -a subject that has been proven notoriously hard to teach and learn. A recently suggested approach for learning natural selection involves so-called threshold concepts, which encompass abstract and integrative ideas. The threshold concepts associated with natural selection include, among others, the notions of randomness as well as vast spatial and temporal scales. Illustrating complex relationships between concepts on different levels of organization is one, of several, areas where visualizations are efficient. Given the often-imperceptible nature of threshold concepts as well as the fact that natural selection processes occur on different organizational levels, visual accounts of natural selection have many potential benefits for learning.Against this background, the present dissertation explores information conveyed to the public regarding antibiotic resistance and natural selection, as well as investigates how these topics are presented together, by scrutinizing media including news reports, websites, educational textbooks and online videos. The principal method employed in the media studies was content analysis, which was complemented with various other analytical procedures. Moreover, a classroom study was performed, in which novice pupils worked with a series of animations explaining the evolution of antibiotic resistance. Data from individual written assignments, group questions and video-recorded discussions were collected and analyzed to empirically explore the potential of antibiotic resistance as a context for learning about evolution through natural selection.Among the findings are that certain information, that is crucial for the public to know, about antibiotic resistance was conveyed to a low extent through wide-reaching news reporting. Moreover, explanations based on natural selection were rarely included in accounts of antibiotic resistance in any of the examined media. Thus, it is highly likely that a large proportion of the population is never exposed to explanations for resistance development ii during education or through newspapers. Furthermore, the few examples that were encountered in newspapers or textbooks were hardly ever visualized, but presented only in textual form. With regard to videos purporting to explain natural selec...

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Nothing in Evolution Makes Sense Except in the Light of DNA

Cited by 43 publications

References 64 publications

Biological Principles and Threshold Concepts for Understanding Natural Selection

Biological Principles and Threshold Concepts for Understanding Natural Selection

“Are Humans Evolving?” A Classroom Discussion to Change Student Misconceptions Regarding Natural Selection

Evolving germs – Antibiotic resistance and natural selection in education and public communication

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