Using human evolution to teach evolutionary theory

Besterman, Hugo; Velle, Linda Baggott la

doi:10.1080/00219266.2007.9656066

Cited by 15 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Secondary biology courses generally have a very minor focus on behavior (Rowland 2007;Silva-Porto et al 2007). Nevertheless, young people are fascinated by themselves, by the human species, their own origin and their future (Alles and Stevenson 2003;Besterman and Baggot la Velle 2007;Nickels 1998;Rowland 2007). Moreover, young people are fascinated by behavior (their own and that of animals) and preoccupied with their social groups.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Brazilian Undergraduate Students’ Conceptions on the Origins of Human Social Behavior: Implications for Teaching Evolution

et al. 2015

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Students' conceptions on the origins of human social behavior are poorly understood. The aim of this research was to quantitatively evaluate the conceptions on the origins of certain types of human behavior expressed by a group of 1,212 Brazilian university students. Results suggest that regardless of either religiosity or evolutionary commitments, the majority of the students advocate nurture-based arguments to explain human social behavior. Data also suggest that behaviors considered to be typically human are better explained by nurture-based arguments. The preference for nurture-based explanations may be due to the absence of the theme "behavior" in biology curriculum in secondary schools. The possibility of teaching aspects of human biology that are known to be influenced both by nature and nurture-based explanations is discussed. We conclude that, despite the enormous influence of evolutionary theory on recent western thought, Brazilian students do not seem to perceive its legacy concerning the origins of human social behavior.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Brazilian Undergraduate Students’ Conceptions on the Origins of Human Social Behavior: Implications for Teaching Evolution

et al. 2015

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“…Causal mapping as a teaching tool for reflecting on causation in human evolution ---Preprint ---Even in light of such challenges, many education researchers have highlighted the potential for human evolution examples to cultivate understanding of general evolutionary concepts, e.g. because the topic is engaging, connects to students' lives, or because concepts like variation are more salient in our own species (Besterman & Baggot la Velle, 2007;Nettle, 2010;Pobiner, 2016;Pobiner et al, 2018;Werth, 2009). Furthermore, because it concerns our own species, an arguably richer diversity of empirical research exists about the causes of our human traits.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Causal mapping as a teaching tool for reflecting on causation in human evolution

Hanisch¹,

Eirdosh²

2020

Preprint

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Teleological reasoning is viewed as a major hurdle to evolution education, and yet, eliciting, interpreting, and reflecting upon teleological language presents an arguably greater challenge to the evolution educator and researcher. This article argues that making explicit the role of behavior as a causal factor in the evolution of particular traits may prove productive in helping students to link their everyday experience of behavior to evolutionary changes in populations in ways congruent with scientific perspectives. We present a teaching tool, used widely in other parts of science and science education, yet perhaps underutilized in human evolution education - the causal map - as a novel direction for driving conceptual change in the classroom about the nature of evolutionary change. After describing the scientific and conceptual basis for using such causal maps in human evolution education, we describe a classroom intervention within the context of a larger Design-Based Implementation Research (DBIR) project. An overview of the teacher-researcher collaborative design process and preliminary results from classroom interventions using causal maps within a human evolution unit are described. Initial results of the interventions indicate that causal maps allow students to make visible their causal reasoning about complex processes in human evolution, and can facilitate classroom reflection and conceptual change. Based on these insights, we offer considerations for future research and educational design.

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“…Evolution is the conjunctive core principle of biology (Dobzhansky 1973;Futuyma 2013) and in order to develop a deeper understanding of any biological discipline, one needs to grasp the concepts of evolution (Meisel 2010). Its understanding requires knowledge of various different and seemingly unrelated topics like genetics, ecology, and morphology (Horwitz 2013), and opportunities for practical work are rare (Besterman and La Baggott 2007). This leads to evolution being seen as one of the most challenging topics to teach in introductory science courses (Beardsley et al 2012;Besterman and La Baggott 2007).…”

Section: Introduction: Why Are Evolutionary Trees Important?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Its understanding requires knowledge of various different and seemingly unrelated topics like genetics, ecology, and morphology (Horwitz 2013), and opportunities for practical work are rare (Besterman and La Baggott 2007). This leads to evolution being seen as one of the most challenging topics to teach in introductory science courses (Beardsley et al 2012;Besterman and La Baggott 2007). The difficulty in teaching evolution is compounded by numerous and very persistent misconceptions prevalent among learners of all ages and education levels (Gregory 2009;Chinsamy and Plagányi 2008;Hokayem and BouJaoude 2008;Mead and Scott 2010a, b;Marek 2014, 2015).…”

Section: Introduction: Why Are Evolutionary Trees Important?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the tree of life: an overview of tree-reading skill frameworks

2019

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Diagrammatic depictions of evolutionary relationships play an increasingly important role in scientific and educational literature. Reading evolutionary trees is seen as a major challenge for biologists in learning about evolution and its applications in research. The skills needed to read, interpret, and construct evolutionary trees are subsumed under the term "tree-thinking, " which can be divided into "tree-reading" and "tree-building. " The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, we review relevant literature on tree-reading skills to examine regularly reported skills for an up-todate overview of the topic and to determine where further investigation might be needed. Second, we compare and contrast published skills and skill systems to highlight commonalities and differences using a published hierarchical system as a framework and integrating the skills identified by other authors by arranging them with their corresponding skills within the framework. The resulting insights suggest a possible synthetic tree-reading model. By bringing together the relevant literature about tree-reading skills, we show that research on tree-thinking skills has until now been conducted mainly following theoretical or observational approaches, often lacking cross-references linking different works; this has resulted in multiple approaches. Furthermore, as most published systems have not been empirically tested, it seems useful to collect existing findings for empirical testing to create a synthetic tree-reading skill model that can be used by educators to structure and organize their learning environments. Teaching the subdomains of tree-reading in order of difficulty can facilitate the entire learning process. Furthermore, the skill model can be used to design testing instruments for education and research that incorporate the full range of tree-reading subdomains and thus, may be better suited to distinguish more advanced learners from less advanced ones.

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Using human evolution to teach evolutionary theory

Cited by 15 publications

References 17 publications

Brazilian Undergraduate Students’ Conceptions on the Origins of Human Social Behavior: Implications for Teaching Evolution

Brazilian Undergraduate Students’ Conceptions on the Origins of Human Social Behavior: Implications for Teaching Evolution

Causal mapping as a teaching tool for reflecting on causation in human evolution

Understanding the tree of life: an overview of tree-reading skill frameworks

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