ALBERT

Description: Background A large body of research has investigated students’ conceptions of evolutionary changes and emphasizes that students have alternative conceptions about their causes. A conventional way to monitor students’ conceptions is through inventories where researchers analyse their written answers. However, textbooks are being increasingly complemented with, or even replaced by, various multimedia materials where multiple modes are used to communicate evolutionary processes. This has profound implications for students’ learning, and highlights that allowing different modes of expression may influence which knowledge they present. Therefore, the goal of this exploratory study is to expand the understanding of students’ conceptions of evolution through natural selection by applying student-generated stop-motion animations to reveal their conceptions. Forty-seven Swedish upper secondary school students generated 18 animations concerning evolution through natural selection. We analysed these animations qualitatively using content analysis to reveal key concepts, alternative conceptions and connections between organizational levels and time. This analysis is related to findings from previous studies on students’ conceptions of evolutionary change. Results Our study highlights some of the benefits and limitations of using these two assessment methods. In terms of identifying alternative conceptions, a clear difference between the results of the two methods of assessment was observed. In particular, the alternative conception of essentialism appeared to a lesser extent in the student’s animations than in their written responses, while natural selection as an event was more prevalent. Conclusions These findings support the view that students’ expression of different misconceptions is influenced by the context and representational form. The work also reveals that generating stop-motion animations to explain scientific concepts is an engaging approach that stimulates students to explore their understanding in a creative and personal manner. This is potentially positive for engagement and learning. The potential for complementing standard paper-and-pen tests with tasks that encompass stop-motion animations is also discussed.

Description: Background Although progress has been made in evolution education, many educators face significant barriers in their efforts to teach evolution specifically, and science in general. The purpose of this study was to identify faculty-perceived barriers to teaching evolution, specifically in religiously affiliated institutions or institutions with a highly religious student body, as well as resources faculty feel would help promote discourse around faith, evolution and science. To do this, we held a workshop with teams consisting of a science professor, a theologian and a pastor (of the predominant on-campus faith tradition) from 17 different institutions of higher education with highly religious student bodies for the purpose of helping them to create a curriculum to address perceived conflicts between science and faith. During the workshop, participants created posters identifying barriers they face and resources they perceive as helpful. These posters were analyzed for prevalent themes and framed within an ecological model of behavior. Results These teams identified prevalent barriers at each level of the ecological model. Intrapersonal factors included a fear of rocking the boat and a fear of student conflict. Interpersonal factors included perceived student lack of knowledge, student ideology, and student apathy. Institutional factors included work politics, a lack of relevant discourse surrounding the conflict, and mixed messaging to students. Community factors included social norms associated with various student demographics. And public policy factors included local and state government attempts to limit the teaching of evolution. Additionally, participants identified resources that they felt would facilitate overcoming conflict including colleagues as change agents, various assets, and tools to negate conflict. Conclusions We determined that many of the concerns are addressable, and many resources are attainable. We urge the community to work toward these solutions. Additionally, we compare our findings to what the literature has shown and discuss the implications of faculty perceptions as compared to the published literature.

Description: Background People with visual impairment have benefitted from recent developments of assistive technology that aim to decrease socio-economic inequality. However, access to post-secondary education is still extremelly challenging, especially for scientific areas. The under representation of people with visual impairment in the evolution research community is connected with the vision-based communication of evolutionary biology knowledge and the accompanying lack of multisensory alternatives for learning. Results Here, we describe the development of an inclusive outreach activity based on a multisensory phylogeny representing 20 taxonomic groups. We provide a tool kit of materials and ideas that allow both the replication of this activity and the adaptation of others, to include people with visual impairment. Furthermore, we provide activity evaluation data, a discussion of the lessons learned and an inclusive description of all figures and visual data presented. The presented baseline data show that people with visual impairment indeed have lack of access to education but are interested in and apt to understand evolutionary biology concepts and predict evolutionary change when education is inclusive. Conclusions We show that, with creative investment, basic evolutionary knowledge is perfectly possible to be transmitted through multisensory activities, which everyone can benefit from. Ultimately, we hope this case study will provide a baseline for future initiatives and a more inclusive outreach community.

Description: Evolution is a key concept of biology, fundamental to understand the world and address important societal problems, but research studies show that it is still not widely understood and accepted. Several factors are known to influence evolution acceptance and understanding, but little information is available regarding the impacts of the curriculum on these aspects. Very few curricula have been examined to assess the coverage of biological evolution. The available studies do not allow comparative analyses, due to the different methodologies employed by the authors. However, such an analysis would be useful for research purposes and for the development of appropriate educational policies to address the problem of a lack of evolution acceptance in some countries. In this paper we describe the steps through which we developed a valid and reliable instrument for curricula analysis known as FACE: “Framework to Assess the Coverage of biological Evolution by school curricula.” This framework was developed based on the “Understanding Evolution Conceptual Framework” (UECF). After an initial pilot study, our framework was reformulated based on identified issues and experts’ opinions. To generate validity and reliability evidence in support of the framework, it was applied to four European countries’ curricula. For each country, a team of a minimum of two national and two foreign coders worked independently to assess the curriculum using this framework for content analysis. Reliability evidence was estimated using Krippendorf's alpha and resulted in appropriate values for coding the examined curricula. Some issues that coders faced during the analysis were discussed and, to ensure better reliability for future researchers, additional guidelines and one extra category were included in the framework. The final version of the framework includes six categories and 34 subcategories. FACE is a useful tool for the analysis and the comparison of curricula and school textbooks regarding the coverage of evolution, and such results can guide curricula development.

Description: Neil Shubin has written an excellent, accessible book explaining how innovations in biology evolve. The key insight—one provided by Darwin but fleshed out by biologists over the subsequent century and a half—is that the precursors of traits involved in innovations usually were present in the ancestors but had a different function. In this book, Shubin also provides rich biographical detail of the scientists involved in the discoveries.

Description: Evolution education continues to struggle with a range of persistent challenges spanning aspects of conceptual understanding, acceptance, and perceived relevance of evolutionary theory by students in general education. This article argues that a gene-centered conceptualization of evolution may inherently limit the degree to which these challenges can be effectively addressed, and may even precisely contribute to and exacerbate these challenges. Against that background, we also argue that a trait-centered, generalized, and interdisciplinary conceptualization of evolution may hold significant learning potential for advancing progress in addressing some of these persistent challenges facing evolution education. We outline a number of testable hypotheses about the educational value of teaching evolutionary theory from this more generalized and interdisciplinary conception.

Description: Background Although personal, familial, and community conflict with evolution have been documented in the literature, these scales require conceptualization as a construct and operationalization as a measure. The Scales of Conflict with Evolution Measure (SECM) instrument was developed in response to these needs. Using a construct validity framework, the content, internal structure, convergent, and substantive validity of the SECM were evaluated using Rasch analysis, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), and follow up questioning. The conceptual utility of the instrument was explored by examining whether it added explanatory insights into evolution acceptance above and beyond religiosity, evolution knowledge, and background variables. Results A literature review and expert consultation indicated that construct of evolutionary conflict perception should (i) encompass the hierarchical nature of human social structures (personal, family, community) and (ii) probe conflict as it relates to human values, cultures, and beliefs. A three-dimensional construct was operationalized as a nine-item rating scale measure. Using Rasch analyses of SECM responses from a diverse sample of 〉 1000 students studying evolution, the instrument met criteria of robust measurement, including: fit to model expectations; three-dimensional structure; high reliability; good rating scale function; measurement invariance with time; and convergence with a similar construct. SEM showed that: (i) family and community conflict had unique causal contributions to personal conflict, with family showing a stronger and modest impact, and (ii) personal conflict had a significant and modest causal impact on evolution acceptance above and beyond the contributions of religiosity, evolution knowledge, and background variables. Conclusion The SECM is an easy-to-administer instrument to measure conflict with evolution and is supported by several forms of validity evidence. The SECM has potential for facilitating measurement of evolutionary conflict in educational settings, thereby raising instructor awareness of conflict levels in students, promoting rigorous evaluations of educational interventions designed to reduce conflict, and fostering conceptual advances in the field of evolution education. Future work is needed to gather additional forms of validity evidence and to test current validity claims in additional participant samples. SECM measures should also be incorporated into more complex SEM models that treat evolution knowledge and religiosity as part of the structural paths to evolution acceptance. Such models could provide insights into the most worthwhile targets for the development of educational interventions to mitigate conflict at multiple scales.

Description: Background National institutes and education initiatives emphasize the need to prepare future biologists to apply discoveries in science towards solving problems that are both social and scientific in nature. Research from socio-scientific, design-based, and problem-based learning demonstrates that contextualized, real-world tasks can improve students’ ability to apply their scientific knowledge in practical ways to navigate social problems. Biomimicry Design is an interdisciplinary field requiring biology and design skills; it informs the creation of sustainable designs through emulation of biological structures and functions that arise as a result of natural selection. Notably, engaging in biomimicry design targets an important biology and engineering learning outcome: understanding of how structure influences function. This study leveraged the practices of biomimicry along with those of design-based learning (DBL) to improve student outcomes in an evolutionary biology undergraduate course. Through DBL, the authors aimed to (1) ignite deeper understanding of how structure determines function in nature (a cross-disciplinary concept) and (2) help students to consider new ways this concept can benefit society (a science process skill). Results We randomly assigned two sections of an upper-division evolutionary biology course to either a biomimicry DBL (DBL group) or species comparison (comparison group) curricular design. Students in the course were exposed to a 1-day lesson, then 1-weeklong case study, and then a final project focused on either biomimicry species-to-human design comparisons (DBL condition) or species-to-species comparisons (comparison condition). To assess the targeted outcomes, we analyzed students’ responses from a pre-post assessment. Students in the biomimicry section were more likely to apply their biological structure–function knowledge to societal benefits when leaving the course. Students in both sections showed comparable gains in structure–function understanding, but there was no change in the number of students who used misconception language in their post-course compared to pre-course responses. Conclusions We conclude that our DBL curriculum, above and beyond the comparison curriculum, may support students’ ability to apply biological concepts to societal benefits without compromising structure–function understanding. Overall, these results provide rationale for incorporating tasks situated in DBL to address socio-scientific issues in biology courses.

Description: This is a review of Mitonuclear Ecology by Geoffrey E. Hill, which discusses the potential role of mitochondrial-nuclear (mitonuclear) interactions in key evolutionary processes.

Description: A phylogeny depicts the hypothesized evolutionary relationships among taxa as a nested hierarchical branching diagram. Interpreting the relationships among taxa on a phylogeny is part of a set of skills called tree-thinking. Because published phylogenies are not constructed for the purpose of tree-thinking pedagogy, the information can be difficult for students to interpret and explicit instruction is required for mastery of the tree-thinking skill-set. We present a process to construct customizable assessment questions using published phylogenies, to assess a key tree-thinking skill, determining relatedness among taxa on a phylogeny. We detail how to construct two types of forced-choice questions: binary-choice and four-choice. In both question types, students are presented with a phylogeny and are instructed to determine which taxon from a list of taxa is most closely related to a focal taxon. The list of taxa includes distracters as possible responses explicitly selected based on common alternative strategies (similarity, proximity, node counting), in addition to the correct response. Instructors can select taxa of their own choosing in order to customize assessments. These assessment questions can be utilized during instruction as a formative assessment to enhance learning or in a summative assessment.