Abstract
One of the most fundamental understandings within biology is evolution, yet often ascribed as one of the most misunderstood scientific concepts by the American public. Despite not being explicitly mentioned in most American science standards, human evolution is nevertheless taught as an engaging context for understanding complex evolutionary processes among pre-college science students. Therefore, pre-college science teachers seek out human evolution content experts (e.g., Smithsonian Institution, NOVA, ENSI) to procure curricula (lesson plans) to teach these concepts in their classrooms. For students to accurately understand human evolution, research recommends lesson plans employ a diversity of direct and indirect evolutionary evidence, infused with social science perspectives related to the nature of science (NOS) and/or socioscientific issues (SSI) to foster necessary conceptual change. Given such empirical affordances of using multiple sources of evidence and integrated social science perspectives to foster conceptual change in teaching human evolution, it is unknown to what extent these attributes are present in lesson plans created by these entities and targeted to pre-college science teachers. To ascertain to what extent pre-college lesson plans on human evolution employ these research-based best practices, this paper analyzed 86 lesson plans created by 18 entities with content expertise in human evolution concepts that had developed online pre-college lesson plans. Among the sampled lesson plans, less than one third (29%) presented a combination of direct and indirect evidence. Further, a mere 17% incorporated elements of NOS, where SSI (like historical (n = 3) and racial (n = 1)) perspectives were fewer. In sum, findings suggest available resources are deficient in fostering the conceptual change necessary for pre-college students to fully understand human evolution concepts. This study evidences a continued need to ensure best practices are incorporated into human evolution lesson plans created for pre-college teachers.
Highlights
Evolution is a, if not the, fundamental concept within the biological sciences (Dobzhansky, 2013)
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) NOVA evolution project (2001) enlisted teams of scientists and science educators to serve as advisors, who guided the development of their video series and subsequent lesson plans
Pre-college science teachers may choose to supplement the science standards on evolution by infusing human evolution topics by accessing lesson plans developed by content experts who develop and advertise these lessons to pre-college teachers
Summary
If not the, fundamental concept within the biological sciences (Dobzhansky, 2013). A poor (or a lack of) pre-college instruction on evolution has had consequences for students’ post-secondary understandings (a precursor to acceptance) of evolution (Brem, Ranney, & Schindel, 2003; Griffith & Brem, 2004). According to the Pew Research Center (2013), 60 % of adults in the United States believe that humans and animals have evolved, compared to 33 % of adults who believe all living things (including humans) have existed in their present form since the beginning of time. Among the 60 % of the public polled that affirmed humans and other living things has evolved over time, a quarter of these adults believed that a supreme being had guided that evolution.
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