Evolution and the nature of science: On the historical discord and its implications for education

Abstract

Research in the teaching and learning of evolutionary biology has revealed persistent diffi- culties in student understanding of fundamental Darwinian concepts. These difficulties may be traced, in part, to science instruction that is based on philosophical conceptions of science that are no longer viewed as adequately characterizing the diverse nature of scientific practice, especially in evolutionary biology. This mismatch between evolution as practiced and the nature of science as perceived by researchers and educators has a long history extending back to the publication of Darwin's theory of natural selection. An examination of how this theory was received by the scientific community of the time may provide insight into some of the difficulties that students have today in learning these important biological concepts. The primary difficulties center around issues of metaphysics and scientific method, aspects of the nature of sci- ence too often ignored in science education. Our intent is not to offer a specific course of action to reme- dy the problems educators currently face, but rather to suggest an alternative path one might take to even- tually reach a solution. That path, we argue, should include the use of broader models of science that incorporate these elements of scientific practice to structure teaching and education research in evolution. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 35: 1069 - 1089, 1998 The importance of evolution to the biological sciences is a point that has been acknowl- edged in the science education literature. Indeed, the standard practice has been to pay obei- sance to its centrality by citing Dobzhansky's (1973) well-known statement regarding the sense- making powers of Charles Darwin's theory in the opening paragraph of articles on the subject. The enthusiasm with which this point is embraced, however, has not been matched by a corre- sponding increase in scholarly attention. Evolution remains a relatively underresearched topic within the science education community (Cummins, Demastes, & Hafner, 1994). The lamenta- ble fact remains that large numbers of people reject the theory of evolution, and the science education community has done little to help teachers present evolution in a way that will ame-