essay on teaching evolution

Volume 4 Supplement 4

Special Issue: Evolution and Medicine

• Curriculum and Education Article
• Open access
• Published: 14 December 2011

Why Don’t People Think Evolution Is True? Implications for Teaching, In and Out of the Classroom

• Warren D. Allmon 1  

Evolution: Education and Outreach volume  4 ,  pages 648–665 ( 2011 ) Cite this article

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The causes of non-acceptance of evolution are groupable into five categories: inadequate understanding of the empirical evidence and the content of modern evolutionary theory, inadequate understanding of the nature of science, religion, various psychological factors, and political and social factors. This multiplicity of causes is not sufficiently appreciated by many scientists, educators, and journalists, and the widespread rejection of evolution is a much more complicated problem than many of these front-line practitioners think it is. Solutions to the widespread non-acceptance of evolution must therefore involve not just further resolution of the “religion vs. science” controversy. They must also involve better communication of empirical evidence for evolution, more effective explication of the nature of science, and explicitly addressing the numerous significant psychological obstacles that evolution presents to many (perhaps most) people. There is no clear roadmap to how to do all of this, but some practical recommendations include (1) more research on why and when different people accept or do not accept evolution when they are exposed to it, especially the role of “scientific” vs. “affective” causes for non-acceptance, and also on apparently deeply rooted psychological obstacles to acceptance. (2) A more explicit approach to explication and understanding of the causes for non-acceptance of evolution should support the often-stated goal of understanding “where students are” prior to implementing the kind of approaches frequently advocated for teaching evolution. (3) Integration of multiple educational perspectives and academic disciplines to support application of pedagogical strategies in actual educational settings. (4) Increased development and application of approaches to evolution education in settings beyond the K–16 classroom, such as museums, nature centers, zoos, parks, and aquaria.

It is almost as if the human brain were specifically designed to misunderstand Darwinism, and to find it hard to believe. (Dawkins 1996 )

Why people do not believe in evolution has no simple answer. (Williams 2009 )

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome direction, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. (Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, Sept. 28, 1820)

Introduction

About half of American adults do not accept organic evolution as an accurate factual statement about nature, a number that, according to polls, has remained approximately constant over the past several decades (Bishop 2007 ; Plutzer and Berkman 2008 ). The U.S. ranks near the bottom of industrialized countries in which acceptance of evolution has been polled (Mazur 2005 ; Miller et al. 2006 ), although there are signs that non-acceptance of evolution may be rising in other countries (e.g., Cornish-Bowden and Cárdenas 2007 ; Branch 2008 ; Williams 2009 ; Brown 2010 ). Surveys of American college students similarly indicate low levels of both acceptance and knowledge of evolution (Nehm and Reilly 2007 ; Lovely and Kondrick 2008 ; Cunningham and Wescott 2009 ; Jakobi 2010 ). Surveys of American public school teachers also find wide variation in knowledge, belief, and amount of class time devoted to evolution (Rutledge and Warden 2000 ; Rutledge and Mitchell 2002 ; Trani 2004 ; Bowman 2008 ; Berkman et al. 2008 ; Moore 2008 ; Moore and Cotner 2009 ; Berkman and Plutzer 2010 , 2011 ; Deniz and Donnelly 2011 ). In other words, there is a “great disconnect” between the views of scientists and non-scientists on evolution (Wiles 2010 ). Evolution “remains a minority view in the general understanding” (Nickels et al. 1996 ), and most Americans (and many people elsewhere) “view the biological world from a kind of pre-Darwinian perspective” (Rudolph and Stewart 1998 ).

In response, much attention has been devoted in the past 20 years, by both scientists and educators, to the field that has come to be known as “evolution education” (Smith et al. 1995 ; National Academy of Sciences 1998 ; Alters and Alters 2001 ; Alters and Nelson 2002 ; Alters 2005 ; Wilson 2005 ; Diamond 2006 ; Meadows 2009 ; O’Brien et al. 2009 ; Nehm and Schonfeld 2007 ; Ellis 2010 ; Smith 2010a , b ; Oliveira et al. 2011 ). As a result, it is no longer true that students’ understanding of evolution is under-researched (Cummins et al. 1994 ), and we now know a great deal more than we used to about what students think about evolution and what pedagogical approaches work and why.

Less attention, however, has been given to the causes for these high levels of non-acceptance (aka “disbelief,” “rejection,” “denial”) in the first place. Although this question has recently been the subject of increased discussion and research (e.g., Evans 2008 ; Hokayem and BouJaoude 2008 ; Richards 2008 ; Sinatra et al. 2008 ; Thagard and Findlay 2009 ; Williams 2009 ; Mead and Scott 2010a , b ; Nadelson and Southerland 2010 ; Smith 2010a , b ; Tracy et al. 2011 ; Shtulman 2011 ; Shtulman et al. 2008 ; Kampourakis and McComas 2010 ; Wiles et al. 2011 ), and there is growing agreement on the general conclusion that the causes of non-acceptance of evolution are numerous, diverse, and complex; most of the scholarly literature on this topic treats causes one or two at a time; and many if not most discussions for students or general readers are relatively brief and/or oversimplified (e.g., Freeman and Herron 2007 ; Coyne 2009a ; Futuyma 2009 ; Meadows 2009 ; Shermer 2006 ), or also focus on only one or two potential causes. Yet this is not the way most students or members of the general public come to evolution; they arrive with all of these numerous, diverse, and complex factors mixed up in their minds in ways that even they may not understand. Religion, for example, is not the only or even the main source of resistance to evolution for many people; it interacts in complex ways with numerous other factors which, if unacknowledged, can scuttle attempts to increase acceptance of evolution. Furthermore, most of the attention given this topic in the literature has focused on classroom settings, and not on venues outside the classroom (which are more numerous and, arguably, more important for life-long learning). My own experience in evolution education over the past three decades—in high school and college undergraduate classes, as well as in museums and other “informal” venues—strongly suggests that, despite all of the research conducted and published during these years, the practitioners who develop and present content on the front lines—professors, teachers, informal educators, exhibit designers, film producers, and others—still lack an accessible but authoritative overview of all of the potential major causes for resistance to or non-acceptance of evolution. Without such an overview, these practitioners can only proceed with some combination of (1) assuming that we already know the one or two causes and how to deal with them and applying a one-size-fits-all pedagogy that assumes that all resistance to evolution is due to these causes, or (2) delving into the scholarly literature and assembling their own list of possible causes and tools for assessing which ones are most important for their particular audiences.

Justification for such an overview also comes from another source. As has been argued by several authors (e.g., Lipps 2006 ; Cornish-Bowden and Cárdenas 2007 ; Prothero 2007 ), evolution education is not just about teaching in the traditional sense. Most opponents of evolution do not operate within traditional structured educational settings, practices, or budgets. On the contrary, they tend to work through non-educational institutions (such as churches) and the popular media, and they are frequently better funded than advocates for evolution. In other words, evolution education is also about marketing . Just as in commercial marketing, in which “understanding what motivates the audience is critical to creating effective advertising” (Wells et al. 2006 ), understanding the full spectrum of causes for why so many people do not think evolution is true is critical for increasing their acceptance. Just as advertising may fail if it is not targeted at what consumers really think or feel, evolution education may fail if educators assume incorrectly that they know why their particular target learners do not accept what they are saying. Commercial advertisers know that consumers decide on purchases for a wide variety of reasons, from emotional to rational: because something catches their eye in the checkout, or because they have done careful research and follow an “information-driven process,” or something in between (Wells et al. 2006 ). Similarly, people reject evolution not only because of their religious beliefs but also because of a combination of other factors, including inadequate or erroneous factual knowledge; multiple, deep psychological obstacles; and sociopolitical factors. It may frequently be difficult to determine what this combination is, but only with some awareness of the full spectrum of potential causes of this resistance can educators select pedagogical approaches that might be appropriate for the needs of their particular audience, both in and outside the classroom.

Several classifications of the causes for non-acceptance of evolution have been proposed (Alters and Alters 2001 ; Alters 2005 ; Smith 2010a , b ; Wiles et al. 2011 ). I follow these fairly closely here but at the highest level divide causes into what may be called “proximate” or “primary” causes for individual non-acceptance of evolution (Table  1 ) as opposed to the numerous potential “ultimate” or “secondary” explanations for why the primary causes exist and seem to be resistant to change (Table  2 ) (the latter constitute their own enormous topic that is beyond the scope of this paper). For example, college students may not accept evolution mainly because they harbor numerous factual misconceptions about it; this is a “proximate/primary” reason. Those students may, however, have so many misconceptions for the “ultimate/secondary” reason that the teaching of evolution is ineffective.

Recent reviews of potential causes for non-acceptance of evolution (e.g., Smith 2010a , b ; Wiles et al. 2011 ) also discuss pedagogical strategies for addressing at least some of these causes. Most of these discussions, however, apply only or largely to the formal or classroom setting and give less attention to how the same causes affect views outside the classroom. Yet it is here that people spend most of their lives (Falk and Dierking 2010 ). In this paper, therefore, I try to focus on the proximal/primary causes for non-acceptance not only in the classroom but also in informal educational settings, such as museums, which are major potential resources for evolution education (Evans et al. 2010 ; Allmon et al. 2012 ).

The overview presented here is primarily a statement of the problem rather than a set of proposed solutions. This paper focuses on why individuals think evolution is not true, not on what exactly to do about that. Since, however, the reason for focusing on causes of non-acceptance is because it can yield important practical lessons for lessening non-acceptance, I will also briefly discuss some of these lessons and offer some recommendations that reasonably arise from them.

Definitions

Many authors have pointed out that much confusion around the topic of evolution can be traced to terminology (Thomson 1982 ; Kugler 2002 ; Moore et al. 2002 ; Thompson 2008 ; Scott and Branch 2009 ; Mead and Scott 2010a , b ), and this complicates the selection of the specific aspect(s) of evolution with which an individual should agree with for it to be judged that they “accept” it (Smith 2010a , b ). This confusion starts with the word “evolution” itself, which is frequently used to refer to both descent with modification/common ancestry (DWM) and mechanisms by which this occurs (mainly natural selection). The term “Darwinism” is similarly used ambiguously (Mayr 1986 ; Ruse 1992 ; Scott and Branch 2009 ; Hull 2011 ). As evidenced by the initial scientific response to the publication of On the Origin of Species , it is possible to accept DWM without accepting natural selection; as is well-known, for example, by the time of Darwin’s death in 1882, virtually all scientists and many non-scientists accepted that life had evolved, but natural selection was not widely accepted as the most important evolutionary mechanism until the 1940s (Hull 1973 ; Bowler 1983 ; Ruse 1999 ). It is likely DWM that most frequently comes to mind when most people hear the word “evolution” (e.g., most modern polls on “evolution” refer to DWM, rather than natural selection, and most images of “evolution” in popular culture [such as cartoons] are to DWM rather than evolutionary mechanisms; e.g., Browne 2001 ; Clark 2009 ). As discussed further below, however, acceptance or rejection of DWM may also be strongly affected by misunderstanding of or discomfort with natural selection as an evolutionary mechanism (Gould 1974 ; Bishop and Anderson 1990 ; Brem et al. 2003 ).

Even if “evolution” is limited only to DWM, it is clear that non-scientists as a whole do not simply agree or disagree with it but maintain a complex spectrum of views (Evans 2000b ; Brem et al. 2003 ; Ingram and Nelson 2006 ; Scott 2009 ; Brown 2010 ). Education researchers investigating views about evolution have used various survey questions to address this (Rutledge and Warden 1999 ; Anderson et al. 2002 ; Ingram and Nelson 2006 ; Rutledge and Sadler 2007 ; Shtulman et al. 2008 ; Southerland and Nadelson 2011 ), including whether species have changed over time, whether the species in existence today have always existed, whether natural selection is the best explanation for adaptation, whether DWM (with or without natural selection) can account for the appearance of new species, and whether DWM applies to humans. These studies indicate that the general public is often unclear about exactly what they know or accept about evolution.

Discussions of science in general, and evolution in particular, are also significantly complicated by conflicting and inconsistent use and meanings of the terms “belief,” “acceptance,” “knowledge,” and “understanding.” As summarized by Smith and Siegel ( 2004 ), modern vernacular usage of these words is enormously variable. Within the realm of evolution education, for example, “knowledge” may require “belief” or not, or vice versa (reviewed in Southerland et al. 2001 ; Smith and Siegel 2004 ). Some authors use “belief” and “acceptance” more or less interchangeably, with or without comment (e.g., Lawson 1983 ; Newell 1984 ; Lawson and Weser 1990 ; Lawson and Worsnop 1992 ; National Academy of Sciences 1998 ; McKeachie et al. 2002 ; Sinatra et al. 2003 ). Some argue that “belief” and “knowledge” are effectively indistinguishable (Cobern 1994 , 2000 ). Scientific probability has been defined as “degree of rational belief” or “degree of rationality of a belief” (Popper 1959 ). Richard Dawkins ( 1997 ) proudly states “I believe in the fact of evolution” and defines faith as “belief that isn’t based on evidence.”

Untangling the linguistic, semantic, and philosophical issues underlying this multiplicity of meaning and usage is truly daunting and well outside the scope of this paper. For my purposes, therefore, I will use the following definitions (see also Fig.  1 ):

Schematic representation of the relationship among the terms/concepts “belief,” “acceptance,” and “knowledge” as used in this paper

Knowledge —a proposition or conception that represents what a wider community employs as the best, current description of an aspect of reality in the external world and for which a learner must have reasons that provide justification or warrant (cf., Plato’s “reasoned” or “justified true belief”; Southerland et al. 2001 ). Knowledge in this sense is larger than what a single individual holds to be true. Holding some things to be true is, of course, necessary for individual survival, but is not sufficient for propositions or conceptions generally treated as “science.” Knowledge in this sense might be said to be “acceptance” (see below) by a wider community.

Acceptance —the act or state of agreement that a proposition or conception is true, based on “an examination of the plausibility, persuasiveness, and fruitfulness of the empirical support for the construct” and “not dependent on personal perspectives of the supernatural, nature, and the world, but rather a rational evaluation of that knowledge claim” (Nadelson and Southerland 2010 ).

Belief —a proposition or conception held by an individual to be true, regardless of whether that individual has particular empirical causes for doing so; beliefs have less rigid criteria than knowledge or acceptance and can be “extrarational” and “have little correspondence with the outside world” (Southerland et al. 2001 ). Believing is the act or state of agreement with a belief.

Understanding —the act or state of comprehending how it is that a particular proposition or conception operates (whether or not it is held to be true) and the linkages and connections among its constituent elements or aspects (Gauld 2001, as discussed in Smith and Siegel 2004 ). Understanding is therefore “deeper” or more trenchant than acceptance or knowledge.

If we adopt these definitions, belief is the general term for thinking that a proposition (such as evolution) is true, with acceptance being a more restricted subset (Fig.  1 ). The terms “non-belief” and “non-believer” can, however, easily be interpreted as implying some kind of equivalence between science and religion (Southerland et al. 2001 ). At the risk of imprecision and/or inaccuracy, I will therefore use the terms “non-acceptance” and “non-acceptor” below for all instances of not thinking that evolution is true, regardless of whether that is due to analysis of evidence or not.

In the context of these working definitions of these terms, one major substantive aspect of their relationships should also be mentioned: the question of what the fundamental pedagogical goal of modern science education should be. That is, exactly what is it that educators want students to be able to do at the end of the day (Davson-Galle 2004 )?

Some authors argue that the goal of science education should be no more (and no less) than to foster student understanding , with or without acceptance , of “the content of science, the current best explanations of how things work—as well as the nature and methods of science” (Smith and Siegel 2004 ; see also Cooper 2001 ; Southerland et al. 2001 ; Alters and Nelson 2002 ). In this view, it is “morally questionable” to require that students believe or accept a particular scientific proposition because it amounts to “scientism” [“the position that all of a person’s beliefs should be based on science” (Smith and Siegel 2004 )] and potentially infringes on student religious beliefs and/or autonomy (Southerland et al. 2001 ; Smith and Siegel 2004 ). Science education should, in this view, “aim at knowledge and understanding of the theory, and let student belief fall where it may” (Smith and Siegel 2004 ). Indeed, several studies report that students can successfully demonstrate an ability to describe and apply modern evolutionary theory (e.g., on exams) but then state that they do not accept (or “believe”) it (e.g., Bishop and Anderson 1990 ; Lord and Marino 1993 ; Demastes et al. 1995a , b ; Chinn and Samarapungavan 2001 ; Ingram and Nelson 2006 ; Lombrozo et al. 2006 ). To “those who find it inadequate or unsatisfying that the science teacher should leave student belief aside,” suggest Smith and Siegel [ 2004 ], there may be some “comfort in realizing that belief typically follows understanding, and that, when it doesn’t, that disconnect is usually the result of strongly held convictions that science by itself cannot undermine or adequately address.”

Other authors, however, strongly disagree with this approach, and maintain that the primary goal of science education should be “changing student beliefs,” specifically the abandonment by students of all nonscientific explanations for the phenomena that evolution by natural selection seeks to explain (Lawson and Worsnop 1992 ; Alters 1997 ; Chinn and Samarapungavan 2001 ). In this view, any real understanding of a scientific proposition (such as evolution) cannot be achieved without acceptance of that proposition as true, and lack of acceptance can be a serious barrier to scientific understanding (Lawson 1983 ; Cobern 1994 ; McKeachie et al. 2002 ; Davson-Galle 2004 ). There is a strong practical (and philosophical) argument in favor of this point of view: most people would like trained scientists to be correct . Although “teachers are often uncomfortable with viewing themselves as persuaders…almost everyone would prefer that civil engineers actually believe the well-established principles of building safe bridges that they learn in their engineering classes” (Chinn and Samarapungavan 2001 ), and most people would likely prefer a physician who actually accepts the truth of most of what he or she learned in medical school, rather than just going through the motions as though they thought it was true (Pennock 1999 ; Ruse 2001 ).

Finally, it has also been argued that students cannot accept a theory unless they develop at least some understanding of it (Lawson and Worsnop 1992 ; Sinatra et al. 2003 ). At the other extreme, some students can accept evolution but not demonstrate strong understanding of it (Bishop and Anderson 1990 ; Lord and Marino 1993 ; Sinatra et al. 2003 ; Cavallo and McCall 2008 ; Deniz and Donnelly 2011 ; see Wiles et al. 2011 for a review). In this paper, I leave this extremely important issue unresolved.

Causes of Non-acceptance

Insufficient/incorrect factual knowledge.

The hypothesis that non-acceptance of a particular scientific conclusion, theory, or idea is mainly due to insufficient knowledge is intuitively appealing, especially to educators, who usually view their job to be communication and explication of such conclusions, theories, and ideas. Some level of familiarity with empirical “facts” is obviously required for rational acceptance of any idea about the material world (e.g., if you don’t know that the Second World War came before the Vietnam War, twentieth century American history doesn’t make much sense). There is, indeed, considerable evidence that at least some non-acceptance of evolution is due to lack of adequate familiarity with and/or understanding of the “facts”—the evidence that evolution itself has occurred and/or what modern evolutionary theory actually claims.

At the most general level, several studies have found that level of education is positively correlated with acceptance of evolution (People for the American Way Foundation 2000 ; Brumfiel 2005 ), although this correlation seems to apply less for “Intelligent Design,” many advocates of which are highly educated (Shanks 2004 ; Scott 2009 ). More specifically, recent polls of Americans indicate low basic knowledge of science in general, and biology and geology in particular.

For example, only 38% of American adults agree that humans have more than half of their genes in common with chimpanzees; fewer than half of American adults can provide a minimal definition of the role of DNA in heredity (Miller et al. 2006 ; Miller 2010 ). Less than a third of respondents in most surveys give accurate descriptions of natural selection (Brumby 1984 ; Bishop and Anderson 1990 ; Greene 1990 ; Demastes et al. 1995a , b ; Ferrari and Chi 1998 ; Anderson et al. 2002 ; Nehm and Reilly 2007 ; Gregory 2009 ; Nehm et al. 2009 ). Knowledge of the fossil record is similarly poor; only 59% of respondents to a recent poll, for example, know that the earliest humans and dinosaurs did not live at the same time (California Academy of Sciences 2009 ). Catley and Novick ( 2009 ) report “startlingly large” variation among college students in their knowledge of the relative and numerical timing of various events in the history of life (e.g., the age of the Earth, dinosaur extinction, the appearance of the genus Homo ) (see also Cotner et al. 2010 ; Allmon et al. 2011 and references therein). Nelson ( 2008 ) writes that students in his college courses “thought of fossils as rare and more or less haphazardly scattered across the landscape,” rather than providing abundant and consistent evidence of the chronology of life.

Given this low level of general scientific literacy, it is not surprising that many people think that empirical evidence for evolution is sparse. For example, surveys of American college students have found that 20–50% think that there is abundant credible evidence against evolution, that modern evolutionary theory lacks “a valid scientific foundation,” and/or that “evolution is far from being proven scientifically” (Lord and Marino 1993 ; Cunningham and Wescott 2009 ; People for the American Way Foundation 2000 ) (as Shtulman 2006 notes, “those who do not endorse the claim that Darwin’s theory of evolution has been well supported by evidence tend to endorse the alternative claim [i.e., that Darwin’s theory of evolution has not been well supported by evidence] rather than plead ignorance”). Thus, when creationists claim that there are “no intermediate fossils” (Denton 1986 ; Johnson 1991 ; Gish 1995 ), when in fact they are abundant in the geological record (Padian et al. 1999 ; Prothero 2007 ), a largely uninformed public accepts such statements. As Hofmann and Weber ( 2003 ) point out, if you don’t know much about the fossil record or genetics, then critiques of evolution such as Wells ( 2002 ) can sound quite plausible. Similarly, Asghar et al. ( 2007 ) report that lack of specific content knowledge among teachers has a negative effect on the decision of whether to include evolution in their curriculum.

Students and the general public also hold a wide variety of specific misconceptions about what modern evolutionary biology says (Brumby 1984 ; Bishop and Anderson 1990 ; Ferrari and Chi 1998 ; Antolin and Herbers 2001 ; Woods and Scharmann 2001 ; Alters and Nelson 2002 ; Anderson et al. 2002 ; Isaak 2006 ; McVaugh et al. 2011 ; Shtulman et al. 2008 ; Wiles et al. 2011 ). For example, many think that new functional traits appear in organisms when they are needed; that evolution consists of the transformation of an entire species’ underlying essence; that it necessarily implies “randomness,” “progress,” or increasing complexity; or that it is mathematically improbable or violates the second law of thermodynamics. Such misunderstandings affect acceptance of evolution because if many people think that they understand evolution, when in fact they do not, they may not only “fail to appreciate how empirical evidence bears on evolutionary claims” (Lombrozo et al. 2006 ) but they can also be misled by critiques of these mistaken views (Cunningham and Wescott 2009 ; Jakobi 2010 ; McVaugh et al. 2011 ). That such misconceptions are at least occasionally important barriers to accepting evolution is indicated by studies in which acceptance is increased by “presenting students with a direct comparison of various naïve misconceptions associated with creationism to explanations which are more consistent with scientific evidence” (Alters 2005 ; see also Alters and Nelson 2002 ; Ingram and Nelson 2006 ; Nelson 2007 ; Verhey 2005 ; Wilson 2005 ; Wiles et al. 2011 ).

Another important area of “insufficient knowledge” of evolution is that non-acceptors may not understand just how useful evolution is as a scientific hypothesis. One reason scientists accept a theory is because it explains many, often diverse, observations. They may even accept ideas that might otherwise seem counterintuitive or not directly observable if they explain enough observations (e.g., relativity, plate tectonics). Non-acceptors may not be aware of how powerful evolution is as a theory, not only in how it famously “makes sense” of all of biology (Dobzhansky 1973 ) but also explains observations in disparate areas of applied biology of great relevance to human welfare, from domestication to medicine (Wilson 2005 , 2007 ; Mindel 2006 ; Antolin 2009 ; O’Brien et al. 2009 ; Hendry et al. 2011 ).

Inadequate/Incorrect Understanding of the Nature of Science

Scientists and educators alike frequently state that one of the biggest causes of non-acceptance of evolution is a widespread lack of understanding of the “nature of science” (NOS; Nickels et al. 1996 ; McComas et al. 1998 ; National Academy of Sciences 1998 ; Nelson et al. 1998 ; Rudolph and Stewart 1998 ; Rutledge and Warden 2000 ; Alters and Alters 2001 ; Pigliucci 2002 ; Farber 2003 ; Trani 2004 ; Scharmann et al. 2005 ; Lombrozo et al. 2006 , 2008 ; Pigliucci 2007 ; Scott 2009 ; Thagard and Findlay 2009 ; Ellis 2010 ; Kampourakis and McComas 2010 ; Cho et al. 2011 ). Scott ( 2009 ) notes that in the landmark 2005 court case on teaching intelligent design in public school classrooms ( Kitzmiller v. Dover ), “All of the plaintiffs’ expert witnesses spoke to the question of the nature of science…” [lack of understanding of NOS cannot be the only explanation for non-acceptance of evolution, since it does not explain “why antipathy towards the theory of evolution is stronger than to other scientific theories, such as the theory of gravity” (Evans 2008 )].

Enhancing learners’ understanding of NOS is a long-standing goal of science education in general (e.g., Moore 1993 ; National Academy of Sciences 1998 ; Cobern 2000 ; Lederman 2004 ; McDonald 2010 ; Yacoubian and BouJaoude 2010 ). Part of the problem, however, is that scientists and philosophers of science themselves disagree about what exactly the nature of science is (Alters 1997 ; Abd-El-Khalick et al. 1998 ; Rudolph 2000 ; Lederman 2004 ; Abd-El-Khalick 2005 ; Cho et al. 2011 ; Duschl et al. 2011 ). Traditionally, “the scientific method” has been presented (especially in classrooms) as a “fairly rigid sequence of steps, followed like a recipe and leading to irrefutable results” (McComas et al. 1998 ). This long-standing hegemony of realism in science has, however, coexisted uneasily, almost since science began, with another very different line of thought, which emphasizes the similarities between science and other human pursuits, such as subjectivity, bias, and social influence, and argues that despite the evident success of science, we are not nearly as certain of its conclusions as we like to think. These views have gone under many names, including relativism, skepticism, deconstructionism, constructivism, and postmodernism (Golinski 1998 ). Thus, there is a central paradox to science: Humans appear to have the ability to sense and comprehend at least some “real” aspects of the world around us, yet this ability is not perfect, and what we make of the world is, therefore, often shaped as much or more by our feelings, hopes, prejudices, fears, desires, and preconceived ideas as it is by empirical observations and rigorous logic (e.g., Bridgman 1955 ; Golinski 1998 ; Chalmers 1999 ; Gauch 2003 ; Haack 2007 ; Lombrozo et al. 2008 ). In this view, real science as scientists do it includes an array of social interactions and “dialectical processes that shape the role theory, evidence, explanation, and models have in the development of scientific knowledge” (Duschl et al. 2011 ). As nicely put by Brown and Gibson ( 1983 ), “most practicing scientists know that a scientific inquiry is much more like working on a puzzle or being lost in the woods than baking cookies or following a roadmap.”

Much of the relativist/realist debates of the past couple of decades, sometimes referred to as the “science wars” (Parsons 2003 ), have died down, and some relatively clear standards for teaching NOS have been put forward during this time (e.g., Lederman 1992 ; Nickels et al. 1996 ; McComas et al. 1998 ; National Academy of Sciences 1998 ). Yet the relative roles of objectivity, certainty, social embeddedness, gender bias, and other factors in the process of science, and the best way to teach its apparently inescapably paradoxical character, remain complex, controversial, and unresolved (e.g., Weinberg 2001 ; McComas 2002 ; Blystone and Blodgett 2006 ; Haack 2007 ; Lombrozo et al. 2008 ; Yacoubian and BouJaoude 2010 ). This lack of consensus about what NOS actually is and especially about how it should be taught has important implications for acceptance of evolution. For instance, individuals who think that science is about absolute certainty may not understand when scientific conclusions change in light of new data or revised ideas (Chinn and Malhotra 2002 ). Individuals who learn that all science is a social construct may reject scientists as just another vocal special interest (Sokal 2008 ).

Another common example of misunderstanding of NOS in evolution education is the importance of what is usually called simply “inference” [but, more accurately, “inductive inference” (Ziman 2000 )], that is, the extrapolation from observations to a larger pattern that is not observed directly. One of Darwin’s greatest innovations was to argue (following the approach advocated by his friend Charles Lyell) that one could use observed small-scale change in organisms to infer (and explain) large-scale change. The first chapter of the Origin of Species , for example, is mainly about pigeons because Darwin wanted to convince his readers of the validity of extrapolating from small changes produced by artificial breeding over short time intervals to larger changes produced by natural selection over geological time [this is sometimes discussed as an example of Darwin’s use of metaphor, which is also a means of extending reasoning from one idea to another (Young 1985 ; Ruse 2005 ; Pramling 2008 ; Gregory 2009 b; Largent 2009 )]. Change under domestication and similar phenomena familiar to most people today, such as antibiotic and pesticide resistance, or changes in the HIV virus (Freeman and Herron 2007 ; Gregory 2009 b) are frequently acknowledged (as they must be) by creationists, who otherwise reject the validity of extrapolating from such “microevolution” to “macroevolution” (Johnson 1991 ). On one hand, such rejection is consistent with intuition. Surveys of both students and the general public similarly show greater acceptance of microevolutionary than of macroevolutionary concepts (Poling and Evans 2004 ) because the former is “directly observable” whereas the latter is not [interestingly, increasing the teaching of macroevolution seems to result, at least occasionally, in increased acceptance of evolution (Nadelson and Southerland 2010 ; Padian 2010 ; see discussion in Smith 2010b ), perhaps because it involves explicating more specific examples from the fossil record]. On the other hand, rejecting the extrapolation from micro- to macroevolution is inconsistent with the application of inference common to all science. For example, if we drop a ball, we can measure how fast it falls; we can then use this result to apply to other falling objects. All scientific hypotheses are essentially about applying what is known (from observation and/or experiment) to what is unknown. If we had to personally observe everything in science to be certain of it, no progress could ever be made in our understanding of the world.

A similarly major issue around NOS and creationism is the application of materialism. Advocates of ID, for example, claim that they are challenging the “philosophy of scientific materialism, not science itself” (Discovery 2003 ). This is a useful rhetorical approach in their public statements as it allows them to appear moderate and reasonable and unthreatening to fields such as medicine, engineering, and agriculture that have obvious personal and economic benefits. Such critics of evolution therefore apparently allow extrapolation (of material causes) to areas that they accept, but not to areas that they do not (where they claim that supernatural causes are required). They may claim that they use science and the technology that comes from it, just like everyone else: “The possibility that divine intervention may occur…emphatically does not imply that all events are the product of an unpredictable divine whimsy” (Johnson 1995 ). Yet, as Pennock ( 1999 ) notes, they never explain what the methods are for determining when divine intervention is and is not to be considered potentially responsible for a particular event. While acknowledging that some theologies may describe God as capriciously and frequently intervening in the natural workings of the world, some creationists argue that a correct Christian view “holds that secondary causality (causation by natural laws) is God’s usual mode and primary causality (direct divine acts or miracles) is infrequent, comparatively speaking” and that science should not defer to such primary causality “willy-nilly” (Moreland 1989 , quoted in Alters and Alters 2001 ). But, again, there is no definition of “willy-nilly.” This inconsistency—which Nanda ( 2003 ) has called “reactionary modernism”—cuts to the heart of the scientific method, which must consider only material causes for material phenomena. Numerous defenders of evolution have tried to approach this issue by arguing for the importance of distinguishing “methodological” materialism from “philosophical” or “ontological” materialism (Pennock 1999 ; Scott 2009 ).

Historically, religious objections were perhaps the strongest among the immediate negative reactions to the publication of the Origin (Hull 1973 ; Farley 1974 ; Ruse 1999 ; but see Livingstone 1984 ), and religious belief is widely regarded by education researchers as a major reason for modern non-acceptance of evolution (Bishop and Anderson 1990 ; Osif 1997 ; Lawson and Worsnop 1992 ; Sinclair and Pendarvis 1997 ; Aguillard 1999 ; Downie and Barron 2000 ; Antolin and Herbers 2001 ; Evans 2001 ; Brem et al. 2003 ; Sinatra et al. 2003 ; Trani 2004 ; Mazur 2005 ; Miller et al. 2006 ; Nehm et al. 2009 ; Woods and Scharmann 2001 ; Jakobi 2010 ; Paz-y-Miño and Espinosa 2010 ; Tracy et al. 2011 ). Specifically, evolution appears to call into question the literal truth of some religious scripture, not only in the Judeo-Christian Bible (Cantor and Swetlitz 2006 ; Robbins and Cohen 2008 ) but also the Quran (Edis 2007 ) and Hindu texts such as the Bhagavad Gita (Brown 2010 ). More generally, however, evolution is seen by many critics as “more than a scientific theory—it is a powerful medium for the propagation of materialism and atheism…associated with a variety of social ills: racism, moral relativism, abortion, pornography, and the breakdown of the family unit…”; for many, “acceptance of evolution necessarily entails commitment to materialistic atheism…”; evolution, in this view, is “not just science, but an anti-religious ideology” (Harrison 2010 ).

Non-acceptors of evolution frequently express the view that acceptance of evolution would entail the acceptance of a host of ideas that they find unacceptable: that life has no purpose or meaning; that races or ethnic groups are inherently different; that there can be no supreme being, afterlife, or spiritual rewards; that evolution means that people are “nothing more than animals” and therefore hard-wired for selfishness and ruthless behavior; and that there can be effectively no free will or self-determination. Research has specifically found that creationists who are exposed to evolutionary theory, including its implication of a close connection between humans and other animals, have increased thoughts of mortality (Tracy et al. 2011 ). Individuals frequently respond to such existential threats by “becoming more accepting of a theory that offers a greater sense of meaning by depicting human life has having ultimate purpose…” (Tracy et al. 2011 ). For all of these reasons, the purposeless, materialistic aspect of Darwinian evolution is highly repugnant to many people (Gould 1974 ). Intelligent design proponent Phillip Johnson’s fundamental objection to evolution, for example, is precisely what he sees as the pernicious effects of materialism (Johnson 1995 ; see Pennock 1996 , 1999 ). Similar feelings are likely widespread. As Thagard and Findlay ( 2009 ) put it: “People do not just think that evolution by natural selection is false; they want it to be false. Even people who believe in evolution may admit that they want it to be false!”

Many evolutionists have argued that evolution necessitates none of these conclusions (Miller 1999 ; Scott 2009 ; Mead and Scott 2010a , b ; see Allmon 2009 for a review), and—as widely emphasized by evolution advocates—most “mainstream” Christian denominations have accommodated evolution [Martin 2010 ; even though such accommodation has its critics on both the religious and anti-religious sides (Allmon 2009 )]. Several authors have suggested that if students knew that such accommodation is possible, it might lessen their resistance to evolution (Colburn and Henriques 2006 ; Scott 2009 ). Yet such messages are apparently not widely heard by the general public, perhaps in part because of contrary views loudly voiced by other evolutionists that religion and evolution are wholly incompatible (e.g., Dawkins 2006 ; Dennett 2006 ; Provine 2006 ; Coyne 2009b ). Indeed, at least a few studies of undergraduates have found that increased exposure to evolution produced decreased acceptance and/or increasingly negative perceptions regarding the consequences of accepting it (Brem et al. 2003 ; Sinatra et al. 2003 ; Lovely and Kondrick 2008 ). For example, in his course on evolution for non-majors at Cornell University which he has taught for more than 20 years, William Provine has found that between the beginning and end of the course, not only does the percentage of students accepting evolution go up but so does the percentage firmly rejecting it (W. Provine, personal communication).

Psychological Obstacles

A large and rapidly growing body of psychological research points strongly to a major role for psychological factors in how and why particular ideas are more readily adopted than others, and such factors constitute a significant but frequently underrecognized element of non-acceptance of evolution. They can be grouped into at least two categories. First are the numerous processes by which the human mind appears to overrule what the senses are telling it and which lead to decisions that appear counter to the perceived empirical state of the physical world. Second are specific, apparently innate psychological characteristics and biases in how humans interpret the world.

As much as logic and rationality contribute to human thought and despite the rise in the influence of science in modern society, human reasoning is still suffused with “affective” influences—emotion, wishes, hopes, beliefs, faith, illusions—that fly in the face of the “facts” (e.g., Harvey 1992 ; Sutherland 1994 ; Pohl 2004 ; Gordon et al. 2005 ; Fine 2006 ; Kida 2006 ; Bering et al. 2011 ; Mooney 2011 ; Shermer 2011 ; Watts 2011 ). One of the explanations for such psychological devices appears to be to minimize cognitive dissonance —the psychological discomfort caused by mutually contradictory cognitions—which leads a person to avoid or ignore additional information likely to increase the dissonance and to seek out additional information that will reduce the dissonance (Harmon-Jones et al. 1999 ). Cognitive dissonance has been suggested as an explanation for or contributor to a host of human behaviors that go against what a purely rational or logical assessment of available empirical information would suggest, including optimism, wishful thinking, gambling, entrepreneurship, and many other things that people do every day (Griffiths 1990 ; Liang and Dunn 2008 ; Krizan and Windschitl 2009 and references therein). Such behaviors, of course, sometimes are highly beneficial. Optimism, for example, is frequently associated with better physical health, more persistence in educational efforts and personal relationships, and resilience to stressful life events and may be, at least to some degree, “hard-wired” into the brain (Armor and Taylor 2002 ; Carver et al. 2010 ; Barefoot et al. 2011 ; Sharot 2011 ). Yet there is also evidence that optimist tendencies can lead to engaging in risky behaviors, which can be hazardous to health and well-being (e.g., Lovallo and Kahneman 2003 ; Isaacowitz 2005 ; Jansen et al. 2011 ; Sharot 2011 ).

More significant intentional or unintentional psychological dissociation, labeled by psychologists as “self-delusion” or “self-deception,” allows people to persuade themselves to believe (or accept) what they rationally “know” is not so (Fingarette 1969 ; Audi 1988 ). Psychologists disagree, however, on exactly what causes or allows this phenomenon (Trivers 1985 ; Scott-Kakures 1996 ; Lazar 1999 and references therein). One interpretation is that although the self-deceiver holds two incompatible beliefs and at the same time, one of the beliefs is somehow not consciously “noticed,” thus allowing the two to avoid direct comparison and so the realization of their incompatibility. In this sense, most people hold numerous self-contradictory beliefs, “if only because we cannot see far enough into the implications of each of our beliefs” (Fingarette 1969 ). As Shermer ( 2007 ) puts it: “Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.”

Although I am not aware of any psychological research that specifically addresses the issue of cognitive dissonance and evolution, it seems reasonable to suggest that it is, at least in part, in an effort to avoid cognitive dissonance that individuals committed (for whatever reason) to not-accepting evolution will—by one or more mechanisms like those described above—resist embracing, or even encountering, evidence or arguments that evolution is true.

How we think may also affect what we accept. Woods and Scharmann ( 2001 ) found a significant correlation between logical thinking skills and acceptance of evolution. Sinatra et al ( 2003 ) similarly reported that students with more sophisticated and flexible styles of knowledge and learning were more likely to accept evolution. In several papers, Lawson and colleagues found that “reasoning ability” was a strong predictor of the number of misconceptions held by seventh grade students about genetics and natural selection, and that “less skilled reasoners” were more likely to have nonscientific beliefs initially and less likely to change those beliefs after instruction (Lawson 1985 ; Lawson and Thompson 1988 ; Lawson and Weser 1990 ).

Numerous studies have suggested that evolution runs counter to particular aspects of human psychology. Several authors, for example, have noted that evolution is in some ways counterintuitive (Mayr 1982 ; Evans 2008 ; Williams 2009 ; Wiles 2010 ); for example, evolutionary thinking states that the apparently stable present world of everyday experience is a result of ceaseless change and that complex structures arise from less complex without a conscious designer. Some of these “everyday” modes of thinking may be innate patterns and modes of understanding, which coincidentally frequently tend to resonate better with creationist views (Evans 2000b , 2008 ; Poling and Evans 2004 ). These patterns or biases appear very early in human development and may constrain “human cognition such that creationist ideas are attractive and easier to spread, whereas evolutionary ideas are less contagious” (Evans 2008 ). Non-belief in evolution, therefore, may well begin “with the natural, intuitive development of ‘creationist’ ideas as a very young child” (Williams 2009 ). Among such potential cognitive biases, “two staples of Western philosophical thinking” in particular “serve to inhibit the expression of natural explanations for the origins of species” and evolutionary change (Evans 2001 ): essentialism and teleology.

Essentialism

The idea that all living things are separate, stable, and unchanging [and its corollary that a species’ outward appearance and behavior are determined by a hidden causal power or “essence” (Shtulman 2006 )] appears to have deep psychological sources in humans (Samarapungavan and Wiers 1997 ; Evans 2000a ; Poling and Evans 2004 ; Shtulman 2006 , 2011 ; Shtulman and Schulz 2008 ). Such views are clearly at odds with the “variational” or “populational” conceptions of the Modern Synthetic theory of evolution (e.g., Mayr 1982 ). It is particularly problematic, however, for the acceptance of macroevolutionary processes; while “essentialist constraints can be modified to accept microevolutionary processes… (they) have to be radically transformed to endorse macroevolution” (Poling and Evans 2004 ). This is why essentialism has frequently been identified as one of the principal historical obstacles to accepting evolution prior to Darwin (Mayr 1982 ).

Essentialism is related to other psychologically difficult concepts that must be confronted in understanding modern evolutionary explanations. Evolution by natural selection, for example, is inherently statistical and involves probabilistic changes in genes and species, and many authors have argued that such statistical thinking is unfamiliar and difficult for most people (Hacking 1975 ; Birnbaum et al. 1990 ; Thagard and Findlay 2009 ). Evolutionary explanations also require appreciation of the related concepts of emergence and hierarchy , which also do not come naturally to most people (Chi 2005 ; Slotta and Chi 2006 ; Thagard and Findlay 2009 ; Meisel 2010 ). Emergent processes are those in which large effects result from smaller operations that are qualitatively different (Holland 1998 ; Reid 2007 ). Unlike simple mechanical systems, in which changes in the whole system can easily be seen to result from the motions of its constituent parts, in emergent processes, qualitatively new changes come about because of many small interactions at lower hierarchical levels. “Not only is evolution an emergent process on the Darwinian account, but thinking is also an emergent process on the account currently being developed in neuroscience…Thus the human mind is an emergent process resulting from an emergent process!” (Thagard and Findlay 2009 ). Hierarchy is similarly counterintuitive because it cannot be seen directly, but is inferred based on the relationships of objects (Grantham 1995 , 2001 ). Hierarchy in evolution is commonly presented in phylogenetic diagrams, and the ability to comprehend evolutionary relationships has come to be referred to as “tree thinking,” which many authors argue is frequently very difficult to grasp and to teach (Baum and Offner 2008 ; Gregory 2008 ; Sandvik 2008 ; Meisel 2010 ).

Teleological thinking—the concept that natural objects have some kind of goal direction, provided by either a self-directing vital power or divine source, which is the cause of their functionality—has a long and problematic history in evolutionary biology. Most evolutionists maintain that Darwinian natural selection is inherently non-teleological because it is not goal-directed and does not anticipate the future (Mayr 1988 ; Futuyma 2009 ). Others point out that evolutionary biologists themselves are responsible for the persistence of teleological language and thinking (Weiss 2002 ; Reiss 2009 ; González Galli and Meinardi 2011 ). For example, Darwin used language that can be termed teleological (Lennox 1993 ), and the ubiquitous reference to natural selection as a “force” or “mechanism” is evidence of persistent teleological thinking in modern evolutionary biology (Nehm et al. 2010 ; Provine 2001 ; Reiss 2009 ; González Galli and Meinardi 2011 ; but see Ruse 2005 ).

More generally, the widespread idea that animate behavior and adaptation are goal- or purpose-directed has been identified by numerous authors as a major source of misunderstanding about how evolution by natural selection works (Jungwirth 1975 ; Deadman and Kelly 1978 ; Clough and Wood-Robinson 1985 ; Tamir and Zohar 1991 ; Pedersen and Halldén 1992 ; Demastes et al. 1995a ; Jensen and Finley 1995 , 1996 ; Kelemen 1999a , b , c ; 2011 ; Moore et al. 2002 ; Kampourakis and Zogza 2008 ; Evans et al. 2010 ). Teleology implies that evolutionary change happens by the transformation of the same basic quality or essence of all individuals in a species, as opposed to changes in the relative frequency of individuals with different characteristics within populations, and so is utterly incompatible with Darwinian processes (Shtulman 2006 , 2011 ).

As with essentialism, this intuitive inclination toward purpose-based teleological explanations appears to originate early in childhood and, unless it is challenged, persist into adulthood (Evans 2000a , 2001 , 2008 ; Poling and Evans 2004 ; Kelemen 1999a , b , c , Kelemen 2011 ). This may occur because, lacking knowledge of scientifically valid physical causal explanations of natural phenomena, young children “compensate by drawing on their knowledge of a domain that they know well,” i.e., the intentionally designed artifacts around them (tools, clothes, etc.); they thus “plug their explanatory gaps by treating nature as though it has been made for a purpose by some kind of underspecified non-human agent” (Kelemen 2011 ). This is not because children cannot understand physical causes (it has been demonstrated that infants can discriminate physical/mechanical causes from intentional causes); rather, children appear to “intuitively analogize to the intention-based artifact domain…and evidence a bias to privilege intentional explanations of events” (Kelemen 2011 ). This innate response has been called “the intentionality bias” (Rosset 2008 ; see also Wolpert 2006 ).

Political/Social Influences

Political and social influences may at first seem like what are herein referred to as “ultimate/secondary” causes for non-acceptance of evolution (Table  2 ) because they provide the milieu in which other factors act, rather than acting directly to cause particular behaviors or mental conceptions. Yet this is probably an oversimplification because social and political factors can, at least occasionally, act directly on individuals and affect their conceptions about the world.

For example, rejection or acceptance of an idea may depend not only on its empirical, philosophical, or psychological characteristics but also on who suggests, supports, or attacks it. It may be difficult, for example, to reject a view provided by parents or another authority figure because this may, in the mind of the recipient, be equivalent to rejection of that individual or institution (Demastes et al. 1995a ; Woods and Scharmann 2001 ; Williams 2009 ; Wiles et al. 2011 ). This can readily translate into politics. The process of deciding who is a legitimate authority on particular topics (such as science) can be socially or politically determined; an individual’s political affiliation and views about morality and social order, for example, strongly predict whom they consider to be a legitimate scientific expert (Kahan et al. 2011 ; Mooney 2011 ). Thus, some people may not accept evolution because it is associated in their minds with a sociopolitical agenda that they find otherwise unacceptable.

In the U.S., evolution is highly politicized compared to other developed countries (Forrest and Gross 2004 ; Gibson 2004 ; Shanks 2004 ; Miller et al. 2006 ; Berkman and Plutzer 2010 ) and, as Woods and Scharmann ( 2001 ) put it, “acceptance of evolutionary theory will continue to engender frustration in the United States as long as the cultural and/or political milieu dictates that it must be so.” Political orientation is nearly as powerful as education in predicting evolutionary belief in Americans; the alignment of individuals, groups, and political parties concerning evolution closely resembles those found with same-sex marriage, abortion, and other controversial “social” issues (Berkman and Plutzer 2009 ). Self-identified political liberals are more likely than political conservatives to accept that humans evolved from earlier species (Mazur 2005 ), and the more conservative a person’s political views, the less likely he or she is to accept a great age of the Earth (Cotner et al. 2010 ). In the 1990s, the Republican platforms in seven states included explicit demands for the teaching of “creation science” (Paterson and Rossow 1999 ; Miller et al. 2006 ). Such political effects on evolution acceptance are not limited to the U.S. Although Hindu creationism may be motivated by belief that scriptures such as the Bhagavad Gita are definitely authoritative, it also has significant roots in Indian reaction to British colonial rule (Brown 2010 ).

Despite the enormous progress that has been made in evolution education over the past 20 years or so, we still lack a comprehensive framework and strategy for how evolution education can engage with the full spectrum of obstacles to acceptance/understanding of evolution in and out of schools, which might allow truly significant improvements on a national or international scale to be realized.

Previous work reviewed above makes clear that the solution to this challenge lies not just in further resolution of the “religion vs. science” controversy; indeed, this issue may have no “universally acceptable rational solution” (Shanks 2004 ; see also Allmon 2009 ). Neither does it lie only in presentation of a more extensive catalog of empirical evidence or case studies for descent with modification or natural selection; people come to evolution with too much psychological baggage. It does not lie just in better engagement with prior conceptions or better presentation of the nature of science; neither students nor the general public are sufficiently familiar with the empirical facts of the natural world. Nor is it only in the overcoming of a single type of psychological obstacle; as is true for all fields of science, studying evolution requires adherence to “a way of knowing” that, for a wide variety of reasons, does not necessarily come naturally to all people, meaning that learning and teaching about it must involve some degree of “conceptual change” (Sinatra et al. 2008 ), which is simply difficult for human beings to undertake.

The solution lies in all of these. Yet every teacher cannot engage all of the causes listed in Table  1 in every class or even semester. What then will a successful “comprehensive framework” for improving acceptance/understanding of evolution look like? I do not presume to provide an answer here, only to offer a few conclusions based on the foregoing discussion:

More research. Determining which causes are more responsible for non-acceptance of evolution, in general or in any individual case, will require much more research on why and when different people accept or do not accept evolution when they are exposed to it, especially the role of “scientific” vs. “affective” causes for non-acceptance. Arranging experiments to adequately test different factors is challenging, largely because of the difficulties of identifying and testing populations that differ only in the desired variables and not in others (Wiles et al. 2011 ). Further, we appear to be just at the beginning of understanding the psychological barriers to accepting evolution, and improvement in education will require continued improvement in such understanding, both in children and adults (Evans 2000a , b , 2008 ).

Identifying student preconceptions. Most obviously, a more explicit approach to identification and understanding of the causes for non-acceptance of evolution (such as presented in Table  1 ) should support the often-stated goal of understanding “where students are” prior to implementing the kind of approaches frequently advocated for teaching evolution, including encouraging students to compare their preconceptions with scientific ideas, identify limitations in their own ideas, and construct more scientifically valid understandings. Just recognizing the complexity of the situation could be a major improvement. My own experience has been that, to the degree they think about it at all, many instructors assume that non-acceptance of evolution in their students is due to some simple combination of religion and low scientific literacy; the former is usually seen as not a teacher’s business, while the latter can be an excuse to revert to an old-fashioned, “more content” style of teaching that is otherwise gradually acquiring a bad name.

Implementation. Even when we have this better understanding, its application in actual educational settings will require a high level of integration of multiple educational perspectives and academic disciplines (Wilson 2005 , 2007 ; O’Brien et al. 2009 ), much more than is normal in most formal educational settings.

Informal science education venues. Even if classroom evolution education was much more successful than it is now, that would likely not be enough to raise levels of Americans’ acceptance and/or understanding of evolution to where they should be. Americans spend the great majority of their lives outside of school (National Research Council 2009 ; Falk and Dierking 2010 ); they must therefore continue to have meaningful opportunities to hear and learn about evolution long after they leave school, and these opportunities must navigate the same complex of causes for non-acceptance as does classroom teaching. This may be especially challenging for some informal education venues, such as museums, zoos, parks, and aquaria, which may have abundant raw material to illustrate the results of evolution but also typically have the attention of audiences for very short periods and at times when they may be as or more interested in leisure than in learning. How, for example, can a museum exhibit on the fossil evidence for evolution take into account the psychological, religious, and/or sociopolitical factors that may be influencing the thinking of its visitors? Simply asking such questions (Evans et al. 2010 ; Allmon et al. 2012 ) may be an important step in the right direction.

Concluding Remarks

One of the main motivations behind this paper was my growing perception that what appeared to be an adequate understanding of the causes for and solutions to the widespread non-acceptance of evolution was not in fact a solid consensus. Everyone knows that religious beliefs are often associated with resistance to evolution. Yet when confronted with the practical task of teaching a particular class or designing a particular museum exhibit, it quickly becomes clear that the actual range of potential causes for non-acceptance is much larger, that neither religion nor biology is necessarily the right place to start, and that simply assuming that we know what our audience thinks and why can lead our educational efforts seriously astray. Unexpected evidence that I was correct about this lack of consensus came from comments by two reviewers of this paper, who stridently objected to various of my conclusions with words to the effect that “everyone knows,” for example, that there is no demonstrated relationship between NOS and acceptance of evolution; that terminological confusion and factual misunderstanding are at most only minor contributors to non-acceptance; that there is no disagreement in the science education community about NOS; that there is no empirical support for the idea that teaching macroevolution will increase acceptance of evolution; that there is no support for the idea that increased exposure to evolution can produce decreased acceptance; and that “good teachers” will automatically know how to deal with any and all obstacles to their students accepting evolution. Despite these statements, my review (and re-review) of the large and growing evolution education literature, together with my long experience teaching evolution in a wide variety of settings, demonstrates that all of these statements are at best oversimplifications and at worse simply untrue. That these reviews came from very distinguished individuals in the field of evolution education reinforces my basic conclusion: that the appallingly widespread rejection of evolution is a much more complicated problem than most scientists, educators, journalists, and legislators think it is, and that those who care about reversing this situation should do more to take this complexity into account as we seek to come up with new and more adequate solutions.

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Barbara Crawford, Niles Eldredge, Irby Lovette, Will Provine, Rob Ross, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on previous drafts and to Jennifer Thompson and Maya Weltman-Fahs for assistance with references.

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Allmon, W.D. Why Don’t People Think Evolution Is True? Implications for Teaching, In and Out of the Classroom. Evo Edu Outreach 4 , 648–665 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12052-011-0371-0

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Evolution: Education and Outreach

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Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science (1998)

Chapter: chapter 5: frequently asked questions about evolution and the nature of science, 5 frequently asked questions about evolution and the nature of science.

Teachers often face difficult questions about evolution, many from parents and others who object to evolution being taught. Science has good answers to these questions, answers that draw on the evidence supporting evolution and on the nature of science. This chapter presents short answers to some of the most commonly asked questions.

Definitions

What is evolution?

Evolution in the broadest sense explains that what we see today is different from what existed in the past. Galaxies, stars, the solar system, and earth have changed through time, and so has life on earth.

Biological evolution concerns changes in living things during the history of life on earth. It explains that living things share common ancestors. Over time, evolutionary change gives rise to new species. Darwin called this process "descent with modification," and it remains a good definition of biological evolution today.

What is "creation science"?

The ideas of "creation science" derive from the conviction that God created the universe—including humans and other living things—all at once in the relatively recent past. However, scientists from many fields have examined these ideas and have found them to be scientifically insupportable. For example, evidence for a very young earth is incompatible with many different methods of establishing the age of rocks. Furthermore, because the basic proposals of creation science are not subject to test and verification, these ideas do not meet the criteria for science. Indeed, U.S. courts have ruled that ideas of creation science are religious views and cannot be taught when evolution is taught.

The Supporting Evidence

How can evolution be scientific when no one was there to see it happen?

This question reflects a narrow view of how science works. Things in science can be studied even if they cannot be directly observed or experimented on. Archaeologists study past cultures by examining the artifacts those cultures left behind. Geologists can describe past changes in sea level by studying the marks ocean waves left on rocks. Paleontologists study the fossilized remains of organisms that lived long ago.

Something that happened in the past is thus not "off limits" for scientific study. Hypotheses can be made about such phenomena, and these hypotheses can be tested and can lead to solid conclusions. Furthermore, many key aspects of evolution occur in relatively short periods that can be observed directly—such as the evolution in bacteria of resistance to antibiotics.

Isn't evolution just an inference?

No one saw the evolution of one-toed horses from three-toed horses, but that does not mean that we cannot be confident that horses evolved. Science is practiced in many ways besides direct observation and experimentation. Much scientific discovery is done through indirect experimentation

and observation in which inferences are made, and hypotheses generated from those inferences are tested.

For instance, particle physicists cannot directly observe subatomic particles because the particles are too small. They must make inferences about the weight, speed, and other properties of the particles based on other observations. A logical hypothesis might be something like this: If the weight of this particle is Y , when I bombard it, X will happen. If X does not happen, then the hypothesis is disproved. Thus, we can learn about the natural world even if we cannot directly observe a phenomenon—and that is true about the past, too.

In historical sciences like astronomy, geology, evolutionary biology, and archaeology, logical inferences are made and then tested against data. Sometimes the test cannot be made until new data are available, but a great deal has been done to help us understand the past. For example, scorpionflies ( Mecoptera ) and true flies ( Diptera ) have enough similarities that entomologists consider them to be closely related. Scorpionflies have four wings of about the same size, and true flies have a large front pair of wings but the back pair is replaced by small club-shaped structures. If Diptera evolved from Mecoptera , as comparative anatomy suggests, scientists predicted that a fossil fly with four wings might be found—and in 1976 this is exactly what was discovered. Furthermore, geneticists have found that the number of wings in flies can be changed through mutations in a single gene.

Evolution is a well-supported theory drawn from a variety of sources of data, including observations about the fossil record, genetic information, the distribution of plants and animals, and the similarities across species of anatomy and development. Scientists have inferred that descent with modification offers the best scientific explanation for these observations.

Is evolution a fact or a theory?

The theory of evolution explains how life on earth has changed. In scientific terms, "theory" does not mean "guess" or "hunch'' as it does in everyday usage. Scientific theories are explanations of natural phenomena built up logically from testable observations and hypotheses. Biological evolution is the best scientific explanation we have for the enormous range of observations about the living world.

Scientists most often use the word "fact" to describe an observation. But scientists can also use fact to mean something that has been tested or observed so many times that there is no longer a compelling reason to keep testing or looking for examples. The occurrence of evolution in this sense is a fact. Scientists no longer question whether descent with modification occurred because the evidence supporting the idea is so strong.

Why isn't evolution called a law?

Laws are generalizations that describe phenomena, whereas theories explain phenomena. For example, the laws of thermodynamics describe what will happen under certain circumstances; thermodynamics theories explain why these events occur.

Laws, like facts and theories, can change with better data. But theories do not develop into laws with the accumulation of evidence. Rather, theories are the goal of science.

Don't many famous scientists reject evolution?

No. The scientific consensus around evolution is overwhelming. Those opposed to the teaching of evolution sometimes use quotations from prominent scientists out of context to claim that scientists do not support evolution. However, examination of the quotations reveals that the scientists are actually disputing some aspect of how evolution occurs, not whether evolution occurred. For example, the biologist Stephen Jay Gould once wrote that "the extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology." But Gould, an accomplished paleontologist and eloquent educator about evolution, was arguing about how evolution takes place. He was discussing whether the rate of change of species is constant and gradual or whether it takes place in bursts after long periods when little change occurs—an idea known as punctuated equilibrium. As Gould writes in response, "This quotation, although accurate as a partial citation, is dishonest in leaving out the following explanatory material showing my true purpose—to discuss rates of evolutionary change, not to deny the fact of evolution itself."

Gould defines punctuated equilibrium as follows:

Punctuated equilibrium is neither a creationist idea nor even a non-Darwinian evolutionary theory about sudden change that produces a new species all at once in a single generation. Punctuated equilibrium accepts the conventional idea that new species form over hundreds or thousands of generations and through an extensive series of intermediate stages. But geological time is so long that even a few thousand years may appear as a mere "moment" relative to the several million years of existence for most species. Thus, rates of evolution vary enormously and new species may appear to arise "suddenly" in geological time, even though the time involved would seem long, and the change very slow, when compared to a human lifetime.

Isn't the fossil record full of gaps?

Though significant gaps existed in the fossil record in the 19th century, many have been filled in. In addition, the consistent pattern of ancient to modern species found in the fossil record is strong evidence for evolution. The plants and animals living today are not like the plants and animals of the remote past. For example, dinosaurs were extinct long before humans walked the earth. We know this because no human remains have ever been found in rocks dated to the dinosaur era.

Some changes in populations might occur too rapidly to leave many transitional fossils. Also, many organisms were very unlikely to leave fossils, either because of their habitats or because they had no body parts that could easily be fossilized. However, in many cases, such as between primitive fish and amphibians, amphibians and reptiles, reptiles and mammals, and reptiles and birds, there are excellent transitional fossils.

Can evolution account for new species?

One argument sometimes made by supporters of "creation science" is that natural selection can produce minor changes within species, such as changes in color or beak size, but cannot generate new species from pre-existing species. However, evolutionary biologists have documented many cases in which new species have appeared in recent years (some of these cases are discussed in Chapter 2 ). Among most plants and animals, speciation is an extended process, and a single human observer can witness only a part of this process. Yet these observations of evolution at work provide powerful confirmation that evolution forms new species.

If humans evolved from apes, why are there still apes?

Humans did not evolve from modern apes, but humans and modern apes shared a common ancestor, a species that no longer exists. Because we shared a recent common ancestor with chimpanzees and gorillas, we have many anatomical, genetic, biochemical, and even behavioral similarities with the African great apes. We are less similar to the Asian apes—orangutans and gibbons—and even less similar to monkeys, because we shared common ancestors with these groups in the more distant past.

Evolution is a branching or splitting process in which populations split off from one another and gradually become different. As the two groups become isolated from each other, they stop sharing genes, and eventually genetic differences increase until members of the groups can no longer interbreed. At this point, they have become separate species. Through time, these two species might give rise to new species, and so on through millennia.

Doesn't the sudden appearance of all the "modern groups" of animals during the Cambrian explosion prove creationism?

During the Cambrian explosion, primitive representatives of the major phyla of invertebrate animals appeared—hard-shelled organisms like mollusks and arthropods. More modern representatives of these invertebrates appeared gradually through the Cambrian and the Ordovician periods. "Modern groups" like terrestrial vertebrates and flowering plants were not present. It is not true that "all the modern groups of animals" appeared during this period.

Also, Cambrian fossils did not appear spontaneously. They had ancestors in the Precambrian period, but because these Precambrian forms were soft-bodied, they left fewer fossils. A characteristic of the Cambrian fossils is the evolution of hard

body parts, which greatly improved the chance of fossilization. And even without fossils, we can infer relationships among organisms from biochemical information.

Religious Issues

Can a person believe in God and still accept evolution?

Many do. Most religions of the world do not have any direct conflict with the idea of evolution. Within the Judeo-Christian religions, many people believe that God works through the process of evolution. That is, God has created both a world that is ever-changing and a mechanism through which creatures can adapt to environmental change over time.

At the root of the apparent conflict between some religions and evolution is a misunderstanding of the critical difference between religious and scientific ways of knowing. Religions and science answer different questions about the world. Whether there is a purpose to the universe or a purpose for human existence are not questions for science. Religious and scientific ways of knowing have played, and will continue to play, significant roles in human history.

No one way of knowing can provide all of the answers to the questions that humans ask. Consequently, many people, including many scientists, hold strong religious beliefs and simultaneously accept the occurrence of evolution.

Aren't scientific beliefs based on faith as well?

Usually "faith" refers to beliefs that are accepted without empirical evidence. Most religions have tenets of faith. Science differs from religion because it is the nature of science to test and retest explanations against the natural world. Thus, scientific explanations are likely to be built on and modified with new information and new ways of looking at old information. This is quite different from most religious beliefs.

Therefore, "belief" is not really an appropriate term to use in science, because testing is such an important part of this way of knowing. If there is a component of faith to science, it is the assumption that the universe operates according to regularities—for example, that the speed of light will not change tomorrow. Even the assumption of that regularity is often tested—and thus far has held up well. This "faith" is very different from religious faith.

Science is a way of knowing about the natural world. It is limited to explaining the natural world through natural causes. Science can say nothing about the supernatural. Whether God exists or not is a question about which science is neutral.

Legal Issues

Why can't we teach creation science in my school?

The courts have ruled that "creation science" is actually a religious view. Because public schools must be religiously neutral under the U.S. Constitution, the courts have held that it is unconstitutional to present creation science as legitimate scholarship.

In particular, in a trial in which supporters of creation science testified in support of their view, a district court declared that creation science does not meet the tenets of science as scientists use the term ( McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education ). The Supreme Court has held that it is illegal to require that creation science be taught when evolution is taught ( Edwards v. Aguillard ). In addition, district courts have decided that individual teachers cannot advocate creation science on their own ( Peloza v. San Juan Capistrano School District and Webster v. New Lennox School District ).

Teachers' organizations such as the National Science Teachers Association, the National Association of Biology Teachers, the National Science Education Leadership Association, and many others also have rejected the science and pedagogy of creation science and have strongly discouraged its presentation in the public schools. (Statements from some of these organizations appear in Appendix C .) In addition, a coalition of religious and other organizations has noted in "A Joint Statement of Current Law" (see Appendix B ) that "in science class, [schools] may present only genuinely scientific critiques of, or evidence for, any explanation of life on earth, but not religious

critiques (beliefs unverifiable by scientific methodology)."

Some argue that "fairness" demands the teaching of creationism along with evolution. But a science curriculum should cover science, not the religious views of particular groups or individuals.

Educational Issues

If evolution is taught in schools, shouldn't creationism be given equal time?

Some religious groups deny that microorganisms cause disease, but the science curriculum should not therefore be altered to reflect this belief. Most people agree that students should be exposed to the best possible scholarship in each field. That scholarship is evaluated by professionals and educators in those fields. In science, scientists as well as educators have concluded that evolution—and only evolution—should be taught in science classes because it is the only scientific explanation for why the universe is the way it is today.

Many people say that they want their children to be exposed to creationism in school, but there are thousands of different ideas about creation among the world's people. Comparative religions might comprise a worthwhile field of study but not one appropriate for a science class. Furthermore, the U.S. Constitution states that schools must be religiously neutral, so legally a teacher could not present any particular creationist view as being more "true" than others.

Why should teachers teach evolution when they already have so many things to teach and can cover biology without mentioning evolution?

Teachers face difficult choices in deciding what to teach in their limited time, but some ideas are of central importance in each discipline. In biology, evolution is such an idea. Biology is sometimes taught as a list of facts, but if evolution is introduced early in a class and in an uncomplicated manner, it can tie many disparate facts together. Most important, it offers a way to understand the astonishing complexity, diversity, and activity of the modern world. Why are there so many different types of organisms? What is the response of a species or community to a changing environment? Why is it so difficult to develop antibiotics and insecticides that are useful for more than a decade or two? All of these questions are easily discussed in terms of evolution but are difficult to answer otherwise.

A lack of instruction about evolution also can hamper students when they need that information to take other classes, apply for college or medical school, or make decisions that require a knowledge of evolution.

Should students be given lower grades for not believing in evolution?

No. Children's personal views should have no effect on their grades. Students are not under a compulsion to accept evolution. A grade reflects a teacher's assessment of a student's understanding. If a child does not understand the basic ideas of evolution, a grade could and should reflect that lack of understanding, because it is quite possible to comprehend things that are not believed.

Can evolution be taught in an inquiry-based fashion?

Any science topic can be taught in an inquiry-oriented manner, and evolution is particularly amenable to this approach. At the core of inquiry-oriented instruction is the provision for students to collect data (or be given data when collection is not possible) and to analyze the data to derive patterns, conclusions, and hypotheses, rather than just learning facts. Students can use many data sets from evolution (such as diagrams of anatomical differences in organisms) to derive patterns or draw connections between morphological forms and environmental conditions. They then can use their data sets to test their hypotheses.

Students also can collect data in real time. For example, they can complete extended projects involving crossbreeding of fruit flies or plants to illustrate the genetic patterns of inheritance and the influence of the environment on survival. In this way, students can develop an understanding of evolution, scientific inquiry, and the nature of science.

Today many school students are shielded from one of the most important concepts in modern science: evolution. In engaging and conversational style, Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science provides a well-structured framework for understanding and teaching evolution.

Written for teachers, parents, and community officials as well as scientists and educators, this book describes how evolution reveals both the great diversity and similarity among the Earth's organisms; it explores how scientists approach the question of evolution; and it illustrates the nature of science as a way of knowing about the natural world. In addition, the book provides answers to frequently asked questions to help readers understand many of the issues and misconceptions about evolution.

The book includes sample activities for teaching about evolution and the nature of science. For example, the book includes activities that investigate fossil footprints and population growth that teachers of science can use to introduce principles of evolution. Background information, materials, and step-by-step presentations are provided for each activity. In addition, this volume:

• Presents the evidence for evolution, including how evolution can be observed today.
• Explains the nature of science through a variety of examples.
• Describes how science differs from other human endeavors and why evolution is one of the best avenues for helping students understand this distinction.
• Answers frequently asked questions about evolution.

Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science builds on the 1996 National Science Education Standards released by the National Research Council—and offers detailed guidance on how to evaluate and choose instructional materials that support the standards.

Comprehensive and practical, this book brings one of today's educational challenges into focus in a balanced and reasoned discussion. It will be of special interest to teachers of science, school administrators, and interested members of the community.

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Student Teachers’ Approaches to Teaching Biological Evolution

• Published: 20 May 2015
• Volume 26 , pages 371–392, ( 2015 )

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• Lisa A. Borgerding 1 ,
• Vanessa A. Klein 1 ,
• Rajlakshmi Ghosh 1 &
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Evolution is fundamental to biology and scientific literacy, but teaching high school evolution is often difficult. Evolution teachers face several challenges including limited content knowledge, personal conflicts with evolution, expectations of resistance, concerns about students’ conflicts with religion, and curricular constraints. Evolution teaching can be particularly challenging for student teachers who are just beginning to gain pedagogical knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge related to evolution teaching and who seek approval from university supervisors and cooperating teachers. Science teacher educators need to know how to best support student teachers as they broach the sometimes daunting task of teaching evolution within student teaching placements. This multiple case study report documents how three student teachers approached evolution instruction and what influenced their approaches. Data sources included student teacher interviews, field note observations for 4–5 days of evolution instruction, and evolution instructional artifacts. Data were analyzed using grounded theory approaches to develop individual cases and a cross-case analysis. Seven influences (state exams and standards, cooperating teacher, ideas about teaching and learning, concerns about evolution controversy, personal commitment to evolution, knowledge and preparation for teaching evolution, and own evolution learning experiences) were identified and compared across cases. Implications for science teacher preparation and future research are provided.

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School of Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum Studies, Kent State University, 404 White Hall, Kent, OH, 44242, USA

Lisa A. Borgerding, Vanessa A. Klein, Rajlakshmi Ghosh & Albert Eibel

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Correspondence to Lisa A. Borgerding .

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Borgerding, L.A., Klein, V.A., Ghosh, R. et al. Student Teachers’ Approaches to Teaching Biological Evolution. J Sci Teacher Educ 26 , 371–392 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10972-015-9428-1

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Published : 20 May 2015

Issue Date : June 2015

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s10972-015-9428-1

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Position Statement

The Teaching of Evolution

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Introduction

The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) strongly supports the position that evolution is a major unifying concept in science and should be emphasized in K–12 science education frameworks and curricula. Furthermore, if evolution is not taught, students will not achieve the level of scientific literacy needed to be well-informed citizens and prepared for college and STEM careers. This position is consistent with that of the National Academies, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and many other scientific and educational organizations.

NSTA recognizes that a century of political controversy has prevented evolution from being emphasized in science curricula in a manner commensurate with its importance. This political controversy has been accompanied by anti-evolution policies, the intimidation of science teachers and textbook publishers, and the general public's lack of understanding about evolutionary theory. Teachers face pressure not only to eliminate or de-emphasize the teaching of evolution, but to introduce scientific misinformation and non-science into science classrooms. This pressure comes from overt advocacy of nonscientific views, such as “creation science,” “intelligent design,” or other forms of creationism, as well as the implicit advancement of those nonscientific views to “teach the controversy” or present “strengths and weaknesses of evolution.” Twisting and abusing core pedagogical principles, such as critical thinking and scientific inquiry is another strategy designed to open science classroom doors to non-science.

Declarations

Within this context, NSTA recommends that

• Science curricula, state science standards, and teachers should emphasize evolution in a manner commensurate with its importance as a unifying concept in science and its overall explanatory power.
• Science teachers should not advocate any religious interpretations of the natural world and should be nonjudgmental about the personal beliefs of students.
• Policy makers and administrators should not mandate policies requiring the teaching of “creation science” or related concepts, such as so-called “intelligent design,” “abrupt appearance,” and “arguments against evolution.” Administrators also should support teachers in resisting pressures to promote nonscientific views, to deemphasize or eliminate the study of evolution, or to misrepresent the nature of science and how questions in science are answered by asking students to consider the validity of evolution through a classroom debate.
• Administrators and school boards should provide support to teachers as they review, adopt, and implement curricula that emphasize evolution. Professional development designed to assist teachers in teaching evolution in a comprehensive and informed manner is an essential part of this support.
• Parental and community involvement in establishing and supporting the goals of science education and the curriculum development process should be encouraged and nurtured in our democratic society. However, the professional responsibility of science teachers and curriculum specialists to provide students with quality science education should not be compromised by censorship, pseudoscience, inconsistencies, faulty scholarship, political influences, or unconstitutional mandates.
• Science textbooks should emphasize evolution as a unifying concept. Publishers should not be required or volunteer to include disclaimers in textbooks that distort or misrepresent the methodology of science and the current body of knowledge concerning the nature and study of evolution.

—Adopted by the NSTA Board of Directors, July 2013

NSTA Offers the Following Background Information:

The nature of science and scientific theories.

Science is a method of testing natural explanations for natural objects and events. Phenomena that can be observed or measured are amenable to scientific investigation. Science also is based on the observation that the universe operates according to regularities that can be discovered and understood through scientific investigations. Explanations that are not consistent with empirical evidence or that cannot be tested empirically are not a part of science. As a result, explanations of natural phenomena that are not derived from evidence but from myths, personal beliefs, religious values, philosophical axioms, and superstitions are not scientific. Furthermore, because science is limited to explaining natural phenomena through testing based on the use of empirical evidence, it cannot provide religious or ultimate explanations.

The most important scientific explanations are called “theories.” In science a theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses (NAS 1998). Theories are powerful tools. Scientists seek to develop theories that

• are firmly grounded in and based upon evidence;
• are logically consistent with other well-established principles;
• have been tested in diverse settings and against diverse data;
• explain more than rival theories; and
• have the potential to lead to new knowledge.

The body of scientific knowledge changes as new observations and discoveries are made. Theories and other explanations change. New theories emerge, and other theories are modified or discarded. Throughout this process, theories are formulated and tested on the basis of evidence, internal consistency, and their explanatory power.

Evolution as a Unifying Concept

Evolution in the broadest sense leads to an understanding that the natural world has a history and that cumulative change through time has occurred and continues to occur. If we look today at the galaxies, stars, the planet Earth, and the life on planet Earth, we see that the natural world today is different than in the past: galaxies, stars, planets, and life forms have evolved. Biological evolution refers to the scientific theory that living things share ancestors from which they have diverged; it is sometimes called “descent with modification.” Biological evolution also encompasses a range of mechanisms that cause populations to change and diverge over time, and include natural selection, migration, and genetic drift. There is abundant and consistent evidence from astronomy, physics, biochemistry, geochronology, geology, biology, anthropology, and other sciences that evolution has taken place.

As such, evolution is a unifying concept for science. The National Research Council’s   Framework for K–12 Science Education   recognizes that there are crucial core ideas in the sciences that “have application across all domains of science” and that should be emphasized in classrooms to “prepare students with sufficient core knowledge so that they can later acquire additional information on their own” (NRC 2012, pp. 30–31). This report concludes that “the core ideas in the life sciences culminate with the principle that evolution can explain how the diversity that is observed within species has led to the diversity of life across species through a process of descent with adaptive modification” (NRC 2012, p. 140). The   Next Generation Science Standards   (NGSS) is based on the   Framework   and also emphasizes evolution as a unifying concept because of its importance across the disciplines of science. Scientific disciplines with a historical component, such as astronomy, geology, biology, and anthropology, cannot be taught with integrity if evolution is not emphasized.

There is no longer a debate among scientists about whether evolution has and is occurring. There is debate, however, about how evolution has taken place: What are the processes and mechanisms producing change, and what has happened specifically during the history of the universe? Scientists often disagree about their explanations. In any science, disagreements are subject to rules of evaluation. Scientific conclusions are tested by experiment and observation, and evolution, as with any aspect of science, is continually open to and subject to experimental and observational testing.

The importance of evolution is summarized as follows in the National Academy of Sciences publication   Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science : “Few other ideas in science have had such a far-reaching impact on our thinking about ourselves and how we relate to the world” (NAS 1998, p. 21).

Creationism and Other Non-Scientific Views

The National Academy of Sciences observes in   Science, Evolution, and Creationism   that “arguments of creationists reverse the scientific process. They begin with an explanation that they are unwilling to alter—that supernatural forces have shaped biological or Earth systems—rejecting the basic requirements of science that hypotheses must be restricted to testable natural explanations. Their beliefs cannot be tested, modified, or rejected by scientific means and thus cannot be a part of the processes of science” (NAS 2008, p. 43). Because science limits itself to natural explanations and not religious or ultimate ones, science teachers should neither advocate any religious interpretation of nature nor assert that religious interpretations of nature are not possible.

The word   creationism   has many meanings. In its broadest meaning, creationism is the idea that the universe is the consequence of something transcendent. Thus to Christians, Jews, and Muslims, God created; to the Navajo, the Hero Twins created; for Hindu Shaivites, the universe comes to exist as Shiva dances. In a narrower sense creationism has come to mean “special creation”: the doctrine that the universe and all that is in it was created by God in essentially its present form, at one time. The most common variety of special creationism asserts that

• the Earth is very young;
• life was created by God;
• life appeared suddenly;
• kinds of organisms have not changed since the creation; and
• different life forms were designed to function in particular settings.

This version of special creation is derived from a particular interpretation of Biblical Genesis. It is a specific, sectarian religious belief that is not held by all religious people. Many Christians and Jews believe that God created through the process of evolution. Pope John Paul II, for example, issued a statement in 1996 that reiterated the Catholic position that God created while simultaneously affirming that the evidence for evolution from many scientific fields is very strong.

“Creation science” is a religious effort to support special creationism through a semblance of the methods of science. Teachers may be pressured to include it or other related nonscientific views such as “abrupt appearance theory,” “initial complexity theory,” “arguments against evolution,” or “intelligent design theory” when they teach evolution. Claims by proponents of these views have been evaluated and discredited based on scientific evidence. These claims have no empirical power to explain the natural world and its diverse phenomena. Instead, creationists seek out supposed anomalies among many existing theories and accepted facts. Furthermore, “creation science” and these other claims do not lead to new discoveries of scientific knowledge. As such, these creationist perspectives cannot be considered science, and have no place in science classrooms.

Legal Issues

Several judicial decisions have ruled on issues associated with the teaching of evolution and the imposition of mandates that “creation science” be taught when evolution is taught. The First Amendment of the Constitution requires that public institutions such as schools be religiously neutral. Because “creation science” asserts a specific, sectarian religious view, it cannot be advocated in the public schools.

When Arkansas passed a law requiring “equal time” for “creation science” and evolution, the law was challenged in Federal District Court. Opponents of the bill included the religious leaders of the United Methodist, Episcopalian, Roman Catholic, African Methodist Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Southern Baptist churches, along with several educational organizations. After a full trial, the judge ruled that “creation science” did not qualify as a scientific theory ( McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education , 529 F. Supp. 1255 [ED Ark. 1982]).

Louisiana's equal time law was challenged in court, and eventually reached the Supreme Court. In   Edwards v. Aguillard   [482 U.S. 578 (1987)], the court determined that “creation science” was inherently a religious idea and to mandate or advocate it in the public schools would be unconstitutional. Other court decisions have upheld the right of a district to require that a teacher teach evolution and not teach “creation science” ( Webster v. New Lennox School District #122 , 917 F.2d 1003 [7th Cir. 1990];   Peloza v. Capistrano Unified School District , 37 F.3d 517 [9th Cir. 1994]).

Courts have applied that same body of law to claims about “intelligent design” ( Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District , 400 F. Supp. 2d 707 [M.D. Pa.2005]) and efforts to deviate from a district’s approved curriculum to present “the difficulties and inconsistencies of the theory” ( LeVake v. Independent School District #656 , 625 N.W. 2d 502 [Minn. Ct. App. 2001]). Courts have also found efforts to single out evolution for special scrutiny to be inherently suspect, finding that isolating evolution in that way “sends an impermissible message of [religious] endorsement ( Selman v. Cobb County School District , 390 F. Supp. 2d 1286 [N.D. Ga., 2005] [reversed and remanded for procedural reasons], citing similar statements from   Epperson v. Arkansas , 393 U.S. 97 [1968], and   Edwards ).

Some legislators and policy makers continue attempts to distort the teaching of evolution through mandates that would require teachers to teach evolution as “only a theory” or that would require a textbook or lesson on evolution to be preceded by a disclaimer. Regardless of the legal status of these mandates, they are bad educational policy. Such policies have the effect of intimidating teachers, which may result in the de-emphasis or omission of evolution. As a consequence, the public will only be further confused about the nature of scientific theories. Furthermore, if students learn less about evolution, science literacy itself will suffer.

Edwards v. Aguillard , 482 U.S. 578 (1987).

Epperson v. Arkansas , 393 U.S. 97 (1968).

Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District , 400 F. Supp. 2d 707 (M.D. Pa. 2005).

LeVake v. Independent School District #656 , 625 N.W. 2d 502 (Minn. Ct. App. 2001).

McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education , 529 F. Supp. 1255 (ED Ark. 1982).

National Academy of Sciences (NAS). 1998.   Teaching about evolution and the nature of science . Washington, DC. The National Academies Press.

National Academy of Sciences (NAS). 2008.   Science, evolution, and creationism . Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

National Research Council (NRC). 2012   A framework for K–12 education . Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Peloza v. Capistrano Unified School District , 37 F.3d 517 (9th Cir. 1994).

Selman v. Cobb County School District , 390 F. Supp. 2d 1286 (N.D. Ga., 2005) (reversed and remanded for procedural reasons).

Webster v. New Lennox School District #122 , 917 F.2d 1003 (7th Cir. 1990).

Additional Resources

Berkman, M., and E. Plutzer. 2010.   Evolution, creationism and the battle to control America’s classrooms . New York: Cambridge Press.

Laudan, L. 1996.   Beyond positivism and relativism: Theory, method, and evidence . Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

National Academy of Sciences (NAS). 1999.   Science and creationism: A view from the National Academy of Sciences , 2nd ed. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Pennock, R., and M. Ruse. 2008.   But is it science: The philosophical question in the creation/evolution controversy , updated edition. Amherst, NY: Prometheus.

Scott, E.C. 2009.   Evolution vs. creationism: An introduction . Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Skehan, J.W., and C.E. Nelson. 1993.   The creation controversy and the science classroom . Arlington, VA: NSTA Press.

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Understanding Evolution

Your one-stop source for information on evolution

Teaching Resources Database

Lessons and teaching tools

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Grade level

Found 318 resources:

La Supervivencia del más Astuto

Grade Level(s):

• UC Museum of Paleontology

Resource type:

Time: 10 minutes

Este cómic nos habla de los esfuerzos de un grillo macho para atraer a una pareja. Y en el proceso, revela (destruye) algunos típicos malentendidos sobre lo que significa estar evolutivamente “adaptado”.

View details »

Extinction vulnerability with Shan Huang, David Jablonski, and Stewart Edie

• Classroom activity

Time: 1.5 hrs

In this article (and the linked assignments and student readings), students examine and interpret data that Shan, David, and Stewart used to investigate whether the mollusk species that humans eat are inherently vulnerable to extinction. Use the tabs at the bottom of the feature to find related videos, assignments, and lessons to build this example into a lesson sequence on extinction.

Planta al ataque

Time: 50 minutes

En este cómic/libro de actividades,   conocerás   a científicos que utilizan ideas evolutivas para resolver problemas   médicos . También aprenderás sobre los árboles evolutivos mientras resuelves rompecabezas   científicos   y completas   una actividad.  

Plant on a Rampage

In this printable comic/activity book, you'll meet scientists who use evolutionary ideas to solve medical problems. You'll also learn about evolutionary trees while you solve science puzzles and complete a craft.

Semejanzas y diferencias: Comprendamos las homologías y evolución convergente (nivel secundaria)

• Online activity or lab

Time: 30 minutes

Esta investigación interactiva explica qué son las homologías, cómo reconocerlas y cómo es que evolucionan.

Evidencias de la Evolución: La ciencia de la evolución

Time: 30-40 minutes

Biodiversity loss threatens human well-being

• Rebecca Tarvin
• Annotated journal article

Time: 1 hour

This research article examines connections between biodiversity loss and ecosystem functions that matter to humans, such as providing access to food, fuel, shelter, and water. This open-access article has been translated into Spanish and Chinese by students in the UC Berkeley Integrative Biology program.

Extinction with Melissa Kemp and Liz Hadly

Time: 1.5 hours

In this article (and the linked assignments and student readings), students examine and interpret data that Melissa and Liz used to study the extinction bias in Caribbean lizards. Use the tabs at the bottom of the feature to find related videos, assignments, and lessons to build this example into a lesson sequence on extinction.

Semejanzas y diferencias: Comprendamos las homologías y evolución convergente (nivel bachillerato)

The causes of mutation with molly przeworski and felix wu.

In this article (and the linked assignments and student readings), students examine and interpret data that Molly and Felix used to study the causes of mutations that matter most for evolution. Use the tabs at the bottom of the feature to find related videos, assignments, and lessons to build this example into a lesson sequence on mutation.

Omicron y el caso de la evolución escondida

• Evo in the News article

Time: 30 min

Durante el último mes, las cepas del SARS-CoV-2 Omicron han dominado los noticiarios del mundo. Esta variante de rápida transmisión ha llevado a limitar viajes, a cancelar planes de vacaciones, al agotamiento de los kits de pruebas, a la vuelta de los confinamientos, y además a un asombroso número de nuevos casos de COVID-19. Los científicos rápidamente se han puesto a estudiar Omicron, intentando entender qué tan rápido se transmite, qué tanto nos enferma, y si es resistente a los tratamientos, a las vacunas, y a los anticuerpos de infecciones de COVID previas. Necesitamos revisar todas estas cuestiones porque Omicron es muy diferente de otras cepas de coronavirus. Omicron ha acumulado más de 50 nuevas mutaciones  en comparación con la cepa que empezó la pandemia. Además Omicron no es un descendiente de la cepa Delta, responsable de la anterior ola de infecciones. De hecho, Omicron es tan diferente de otras variantes que parece que ha estado evolucionando por su cuenta durante muchos meses. Y esto nos conduce a otro misterio que los científicos están tratando de resolver: ¿dónde estaba Omicron escondido mientras toda esta evolución tenía lugar?

Evo in the news: Omicron and the case of the hidden evolution

This news brief from January 2022, explores the evolutionary mystery at the heart of the Omicron COVID-19 surge.

Artificial Selection with Elaine Ostrander and Team

In this article (and the linked assignments and student readings), students examine and interpret data that the team used to study the genes undergoing artificial selection during the development of different dog breeds. Use the tabs at the bottom of the feature to find related videos, assignments, and lessons to build this example into a lesson sequence on artificial selection.

Sexual Selection with Maydianne Andrade

In this article (and the linked assignments and student readings), students examine and interpret data that Maydianne collected to help her figure out why redback spiders evolved a mating behavior in which the male spider is often killed by the female spider. Use the tabs at the bottom of the feature to find related videos, assignments, and lessons to build this example into a lesson sequence on sexual selection.

Interview: Geerat Vermeij on the Fossil record

• California Academy of Sciences
• Interview with Scientist

Time: 20-30 minutes

This interview with MacArthur Fellow and paleobiologist, Geerat Vermeij, covers much ground, including adaptations in the mollusks he studies, evolutionary arms races, punctuated equilibrium, extinctions, macroevolution, and the value of diversity.

La historia de la vida: La observación de los patrones

La ciencia usa muchas evidencias diferentes para reconstruir los árboles filogenéticos que nos muestran como se relacionan las especies entre sí. Este artículo se encuentra en Evolución 101 .

Mecanismos: Los procesos de la evolución

Time: Varies

Aprende sobre los procesos básicos que han moldeado la vida y producido su asombrosa diversidad. Este artículo se encuentra en Evolución 101 .

Selección natural

La idea más famosa de Darwin, “La selección Natural”, explica la gran diversidad de la vida. Aprende cómo funciona, explora algunos ejemplos, y descubre cómo evitar falsas ideas. Este artículo se encuentra en Evolución 101 .

La especiación

Explicar qué es una especie no es tan fácil como puede parecer.  Descubre como la biología define especie y cómo surgen las nuevas especies. Este artículo se encuentra en Evolución 101 .

Del caldo primigenio a las células: El origen de la vida

Time: 20 minutes

Profundiza en los conocimientos actuales sobre el origen de la vida y en cómo los científicos y las científicas son capaces de investigar en los detalles de acontecimientos tan antiguos.

Un rompecabezas Pleistoceno: Extinctión en América del Sur

En este comic podrás seguir la investigación que hicieron María y Miguel para resolver un misterio paleontológico. Hace más de 11000 años, más del 80% de las especies de grandes animales de Sudamérica se extinguieron. ¿Por qué pasó? (Disponible en inglés, español y portugués.)

Great Fossil Find

Time: 40 minutes

Students are taken on an imaginary fossil hunt and hypothesize as to the identity of the creature they discover. Students revise their hypotheses as new evidence is "found."

Evo in the news: Human evolutionary history impacts our COVID-19 risk

This news brief from November 2020 explains how a gene from Neanderthals made its way into human populations and now affects COVID-19 risk.

La historia evolutiva del ser humano afecta nuestro riesgo de padecer COVID-19

Este resumen de noticias de noviembre de 2020 explica cómo un gen de los Neandertales que se introdujo en las poblaciones de los humanos modernos, afecta al riesgo de padecer COVID-19.

Journal Club Toolkit

Time: Several class periods

This set of teaching materials aims to help instructors engage their students with the primary literature in evolutionary biology through a "journal club" that can be implemented in a discussion section or smaller class. It includes several helpful tools: annotated articles, a reading guide, additional suggested reading, and tips for students leading a discussion of a journal article.

Investigating a Deep Sea Mystery

• Lab activity

Time: 4-5 class periods

In this lab activity, students examine authentic morphological and phylogenetic data of three fish families and then pose and test alternative hypotheses about the fishes' classification.

Mate choice and fitness consequences

Students read a 2005 paper on the fitness consequences of mate choice alongside an interactive guide that asks the reader to answer key questions about each section of the article.

Stabilization of the fig-pollinator mutualism

Students read a 2008 paper on the role of parasites in stabilizing the fig-pollinator mutualism alongside an interactive guide that explains each section of the paper and draws the reader's attention to important points in the article.

Selection and evolution with a deck of cards

• Evolution: Education and Outreach

Time: 1-2 class periods

This classroom exercise introduces the concept of evolution by natural selection in a hypothesis-driven, experimental fashion, using a deck of cards.

Natural Selection & Sexual Selection: An Illustrated Introduction

• Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Time: 15 minutes

This illustrated video explores how natural and sexual selection can shape the way animals look and act, sometimes transforming the drab into the magnificent. To access the associated multiple choice and open answer questions, you'll need to register with the site.

Making Cladograms

Time: One class period

This lesson introduces students to the building of cladograms as evolutionary trees, showing how shared derived characters can be used to reveal degrees of relationship.

Inducing Evolution in Bean Beetles

• Morehouse College and Emory University

Time: Multi-week

In this lab, students design and conduct experiments to evaluate whether evolution by natural selection (or alternatively, genetic drift) may be induced in laboratory populations.

Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium According to Hoyle

• Cronkite, Donald

Students achieve an understanding of the Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium by using decks of playing cards without recourse to algebra.

Exploring KT extinction patterns

Time: 2-3 hours

Students will be introduced to a data set about mollusk genera that survived and did not survive the KT extinction event. They will formulate hypotheses regarding extinction patterns and mechanisms and analyze the data for evidence relevant to those hypotheses.

From soup to cells – The origin of life

Delve into our current understandings of the origins of life and how scientists are able to investigate the details of such ancient events. This article is located within Evolution 101 .

Active-learning slides for undergraduate evolution instruction

Time: 2 minutes

This resource describes three types of short activity that are simple to introduce into a lecture-based course, that can be incorporated into a slide presentation, and that help increase the level of active pedagogy: minute papers, personal response questions, and problem-based discussions. Many downloadable sample slides regarding evolutionary topics are provided.

• The ChronoZoom Team
• Infographic

Time: 1-6 hours

"Big History" is the currently active effort to bring together in a unified way all of the information about the past, both humanistic and scientific. One of the problems for anyone teaching Earth history or Big History is how to help students (or anyone) to comprehend the time scales. This series of graphic panels helps address this challenge by presenting Big History in a sequence of time scales.

Stories from the Fossil Record

Time: One to two class periods

This web-based module provides students with a basic understanding of how fossils can be used to interpret the past.

Stickleback Evolution Virtual Lab

• Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Time: 3 hours

This virtual lab teaches skills of data collection and analysis to study evolutionary processes using stickleback fish and fossil specimens.

Spoons, forks, chopsticks, straws: Simulating natural selection

• Kathryn Flinn

In this classroom activity, students participate in demonstrating how natural selection works. They play the roles of predators with different feeding appendages (spoons, forks, chopsticks, or straws) and compete to gather beans as prey.

Speciation: The basics

Figuring out what species are is not as easy as one might think. Find out how biologists define species and how new species evolve. This article is located within Evolution 101 .

Speciation: An illustrated introduction

This video illustrates the speciation process in birds to help explain the basis of earth's biodiversity. Registration may be required to view the discussion and multiple choice questions that accompany the video.

Sounds Around

• Janulaw, Sharon

Students use their sense of hearing outdoors to discover things in their world.

Sniff and Guess

Students use their sense of smell to identify the contents of Mystery Odor Cans.

Similarities and differences: Understanding homology and convergent evolution

This interactive investigation explains what homologies are, how to recognize them, and how convergent traits evolve.

Two- and ten-minute trees

Time: 2-10 minutes

Use these quick and simple classroom activities to better develop your students' tree-thinking skills. Each takes just a few minutes and helps reinforce key ideas about tree reading and common ancestry.

Tree thinking challenges

• National Evolutionary Synthesis Center

In the this interactive video, college students guide viewers through problems on phylogenetics and address some of the misconceptions that many students have with the subject. This resource is available from the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center

Tree thinking basics

Time: 6 minutes

Tree thinking, or phylogenetics, is an important way of understanding evolutionary relationships. Reading trees correctly can pose some challenges. This video introduces the basics of three reading and addresses common problems in tree reading. This resource is available from the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center

Tree of Life poster without images (medium)

Print this 18x24" poster for your classroom wall. For ideas about how to use the poster in your class, visit Two- and Ten-minute Trees">Two- and Ten-minute Trees .

Sequencing Time

Time: 40-50 minutes

Students assign relative and numerical times to events in their lives to understand how scientists developed the Geologic Time Scale.

Tree of Life poster without images (large)

Print this 28x36" poster for your classroom wall. For ideas about how to use the poster in your class, visit Two- and Ten-minute Trees .

Relevance of evolution: Medicine

Explore just a few of the many cases in which evolutionary theory helps us understand and treat disease. Bacterial infections, HIV, and Huntington's disease are highlighted.

Relevance of evolution: Conservation

Explore just a few of the many cases in which evolutionary theory helps us form conservation strategies.

Tree of life poster with images (large)

Print this 28x36" poster for your classroom wall. For ideas about how to use the poster in your class, visit .

Relevance of evolution: Agriculture

Explore just a few of the many cases in which evolutionary theory helps us secure and improve the world's crops. Genetic diversity, disease resistance and pest control are highlighted.

• Tree of Life
• Interactive

Time: 1 class period

This interactive web resource allows you to follow any branch on the tree of life to find out how scientists hypothesize all the species on Earth (plus some extinct lineages) are related to one another.

This resource appears at the Tree of Life website.

Reconstruction

Time: 50-60 minutes

Students reconstruct sentences by reassembling the words that have been cut apart.

Radiations and extinctions: Biodiversity through the ages

• Zimmer, Carl

This excerpted chapter from Carl Zimmer's book, The Tangled Bank, describes the evolutionary processes responsible for large scale patterns in the diversity of life through time. Reprinted with the permission of Roberts and Company Publishers, Inc. This resource is available from the National Center for Science Education.

Toxin resistance in clams

Time: 1 to 2 class periods

This case study in the form of a set of PowerPoint slides examines the evolution of toxin resistance in clams.

Proposing the Theory of Biological Evolution

• National Academy of Sciences

Time: Three class periods

Students read short excerpts of original statements on evolution from Jean Lamarck, Charles Darwin, and Alfred Russel Wallace to gain historical perspective and an understanding of the nature of science.

Problem-based discussion: Simulations of genetic drift

Time: 2-20 minutes

This set of five PowerPoint slides featuring questions for problem-based discussion (i.e., open-ended questions that engage students with each other and with course material) can be easily incorporated into lectures on genetic drift.

Problem-based discussion: Population genetics calculations and Hardy Weinberg

Time: 5-20 minutes

This set of two PowerPoint slides featuring questions for problem-based discussion (i.e., open-ended questions that engage students with each other and with course material) can be easily incorporated into lectures on populations genetics.

Problem-based discussion: Natural selection in Darwin’s finches

This set of two PowerPoint slides featuring questions for problem-based discussion (i.e., open-ended questions that engage students with each other and with course material) can be easily incorporated into lectures on natural selection.

Preying on Beans

Students act as predators searching for prey (beans) in two different settings to demonstrate the processes of adaptation and selection.

Predicting evolutionary relationships

Students compare the sequence of amino acids in a gene shared between humans and six other organisms and infer evolutionary relationships among the species.

Population genetics, selection, and evolution

Time: Two to three 50-minute class periods

This hands-on activity, used in conjunction with a short film, teaches students about population genetics, the Hardy-Weinberg principle, and how natural selection alters the frequency distribution of heritable traits. It

Population genetics slide set

This set of two PowerPoint slides featuring personal response questions (i.e., multiple choice questions that can be used with "clicker" technology) can be incorporated into lectures on the mechanisms of evolution in order to actively engage students in thinking about evolution.

Phylogenetics laboratory: Reconstructing evolutionary history

• Kefyn Catley and Laura Novick

By examining specimens, students fill in a data matrix of animal taxa and complete exercises to learn about synapomorphies, mapping characters on a phylogeny, and assessing parsimony.

Phylogenetics and tree thinking slide set

This set of five PowerPoint slides featuring personal response questions (i.e., multiple choice questions that can be used with "clicker" technology) can be incorporated into lectures on the mechanisms of evolution in order to actively engage students in thinking about evolution.

Phylogenetic systematics, a.k.a. evolutionary trees

Learn about phylogenetic systematics, the study of the evolutionary relationships among organisms, and how the field is shaping biological research today.

This case study in the form of a set of PowerPoint slides examines the evolution of the wrinkled pea from its ancestral round pea shape.

Parsimonious explanations for punctuated patterns

Punctuated equilibrium is sometimes erroneously cited as evidence that evolutionary biology still hasn't figured out how evolution works. In fact nothing could be further from the truth. Punctuated equilibrium builds on (not tears down!) established evolutionary theory. Find out how the process works. This article appears at SpringerLink.

Parasites and pathogens take the leap

Diseases like SARS, HIV, and West Nile Virus may be new to humans, but they are old news to other species. These and other emerging infectious diseases have recently added humans to the list of hosts they infect. An evolutionary perspective can help us better understand and, we hope, control this problem. This article appears at SpringerLink.

Origami Birds

Time: Three to four class periods

Students build and evolve and modify paper-and-straw "birds" to simulate natural selection acting on random mutations.

Natural selection misconceptions diagnostic

In this 12-item multiple-choice evolution test, wrong answers are designed to tap into common student misconceptions. It can be used to diagnose evolution misconceptions related to natural selection and to assess the effectiveness of instruction in helping students overcome their misconceptions.

Oh Say, What Can You See?

Students walk outdoors to use their sense of sight and record and compare their observations.

Observing Brine Shrimp

Students observe brine shrimp eggs, create an appropriate environment for their survival, and observe their growth.

Not Just a Theory

Time: 10 to 15 minutes

Students engage in an activity that clarifies the scientific meaning of the term theory .

Nature of science

Understanding how science works allows one to easily distinguish science from non-science. Thus, to understand biological evolution, or any other science, it is essential to begin with the nature of science.

Natural selection: The basics

Darwin's most famous idea, natural selection, explains much of the diversity of life. Learn how it works, explore examples, and find out how to avoid misconceptions. This article is located within Evolution 101 .

Natural selection from the gene up: The work of Elizabeth Dahlhoff and Nathan Rank

• Research profile

Find out how we investigate evolutionary adaptations by following two scientists and their team as they figure out how the willow leaf beetle survives in different climates.

Natural selection and evolution of rock pocket mouse populations

This lesson serves as an extension to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute short film The Making of the Fittest: Natural Selection and Adaptation. It provides an opportunity for students to analyze amino acid data and draw conclusions about the evolution of coat-color phenotypes in the rock pocket mouse.

Natural selection and adaptation slide set

This set of five PowerPoint slides featuring personal response questions (i.e., multiple choice questions that can be used with "clicker" technology) can be incorporated into lectures on natural selection and adaptation in order to actively engage students in thinking about evolution.

Names, they are a-changing

The popular press often describes scientific controversies regarding which species ancient hominin fossils represent and how they are related to one another. How should students interpret the frequent name changes experienced by our extinct relatives? What should they make of headlines that trumpet major revisions of the branching patterns on our limb of the tree of life? This article will help teachers develop instruction surrounding these issues, discourage misconceptions, and help students interpret media coverage in light of the process of science. This article appears at SpringerLink.

Mystery Meat

• Collins, Jennifer

In this lesson students follow the steps of scientists Steve Palumbi (Stanford University) and Scott Baker (University of Oregon), who used DNA data (Barcoding) to reveal the species identifications of kujira (whale meat) from foreign markets. Their study used DNA data to identify unknown organisms in order to investigate whether whales are being illegally hunted and sold as meat. By going through the lesson, students practice various aspects of the process of science by asking scientific questions, collecting and analyzing data, comparing their results with those of the real researchers, and finally determining possible next steps.

Mouse fur color

This case study in the form of a set of PowerPoint slides examines the evolution of light fur in beach mice from the molecular level up to the population genetics level.

Monkey opsins

Time: Two class periods

This case study in the form of a set of PowerPoint slides examines the evolution of trichromatic vision in old world monkeys.

The TimeTree of Life

Download a poster of the entire Tree of Life, calibrated with a timescale.

The Natural Selection Game

• Gendron, Robert

This is a board game that simulates natural selection. It is suitable for an introductory biology class and for more advanced classes where you could go into more detail on important principles such as the role of variation and mutation.

The Monterey Pine through geologic time

• Perry, Frank

Understanding the evolutionary history of the Monterey Pine may help us conserve this species.

The Missing Link

• Strasser, M. Elizabeth

Time: 45 minutes

The setting for this case study is a paleontological dig in East Africa, where an undergraduate student has unearthed part of what appears to be an ancestral human skull. Students read the story and then examine a number of primate skulls. They are asked to build a phylogeny based on their observations.

Molecular genetics of color mutations in rock pocket mice

This lesson requires students to transcribe and translate portions of the wild-type and mutant rock pocket mouse Mc1r genes and compare sequences to identify the locations and types of mutations responsible for the coat color variation described in a short film.

Modeling Evolutionary Relationships with Trees

• Shape of Life

Time: 100-120 minutes

In this lesson, students will examine a beautiful tree of life poster by artist Ray Troll and use it as a launchpad to explore evolutionary, or phylogenetic trees. Students will take a pre-assessment to address misconceptions about phylogenetic trees before completing a modeling activity to give them a better understanding of how trees are used to model evolutionary relationships.

Minute paper slide set

Time: 3 minutes

This set of 18 PowerPoint slides features minute paper questions (questions for brief, in-class writing assignments) about a wide variety of evolutionary topics. Minute papers have become a widely used technique for actively engaging students and provide an excellent way to break up a class session. They take just a few minutes to complete and can be easily incorporated into lecture material.

The Making of the Fittest: The Birth and Death of Genes

Time: 15-20 minutes

This 13-minute film describes how scientists have pieced together the evolutionary history of the Antarctic icefish by studying its genome – an excellent case study for genetic evolution as both the gain and loss of genes have led to key adaptations.

The Making of the Fittest: Natural Selection in Humans

Time: 15-30 minutes

This 14-minute film describes the connection between the infectious parasitic disease malaria and the genetic disease sickle cell anemia - one of the best-understood examples of natural selection in humans.

The Making of the Fittest: Natural Selection and Adaption

This 10-minute film describes the research of Dr. Michael Nachman and colleagues, whose work in the field and in the lab has documented and quantified physical and genetic evolutionary changes in rock pocket mouse populations.

Mechanisms of evolution slide set

This set of three PowerPoint slides featuring personal response questions (i.e., multiple choice questions that can be used with "clicker" technology) can be incorporated into lectures on the mechanisms of evolution in order to actively engage students in thinking about evolution.

The great clade race: Zombie Edition

• Martindale, Rowan and Goldsmith, David

Time: 30-50 minutes

This activity uses a simple puzzle to get students to use cladistic thinking without bogging them down with terminology.

The genes that lie beneath: The work of Leslea Hlusko

Evolutionary biologist Leslea Hlusko's research takes her from the deserts of Ethiopia, where she hunts for hominid and primate fossils, to a baboon colony in San Antonio where she takes thousands of measurements of the primates' imposing canines. This research profile describes how the two projects are linked by a hunt for genetic variation, a key component of natural selection.

The Evolution of Flight in Birds

This interactive module examines evidence from the fossil record, behavior, biomechanics and cladistic analysis to interpret the sequence of events that led to flight in the dinosaur lineage.

The Evolution Lab

The Evolution Lab contains two main parts. In the first, students build phylogenetic trees themed around the evidence of evolution, including fossils, biogeography, and similarities in DNA. In the second, students explore an interactive tree of life and trace the shared ancestry of numerous species.

The ChronoZoom Time Atlas of Earth History and Big History

This resource presents Big History in a sequence of time scales through graphic panels. Each panel is accompanied by a page of text, discussing the historical features shown in the panel.

The Checks Lab

Students construct plausible scenarios using bank checks to learn how human values and biases influence observation and interpretation.

Mechanisms of evolution

Learn about the basic processes that have shaped life and produced its amazing diversity. This article is located within Evolution 101 .

Mealworm Metamorphosis

Time: 50-60 minutes for initial observation and set up. Approx. 10-15 minutes for daily observations.

Students will observe offspring (mealworms) that do not initially resemble their parent organism (darkling beetles) throughout complete metamorphosis. Students will also create and maintain an appropriate habitat for the mealworms.

McKittrick Fossil Find Classroom Activity

In this lesson, students play the roles of paleontologists on a dig. They “unearth” a few fossils at a time and attempt to reconstruct the animal the fossils represent.

The Beetle Project: Investigating insects in a warming world

Time: 30 min to 10 class periods

This adaptable instructional module uses insects as a model system to illustrate the biological impacts of climate change, with the goal of engaging students with a range of hands-on and minds-on activities that increase their understanding of how science works, evolutionary processes, and the impacts of climate change.

Mass extinction

Usually, extinction operates at a fairly constant rate, culling some species while speciation generates new ones. However, at a few points in life's history the humdrum of regular extinction has been interrupted by mass extinctions. Learn more about these biodiversity crises.

Textures Are Everywhere

Time: 30 Minutes

Students use their sense of touch outdoors and record and compare their observations.

Mantis shrimp shoulder their evolutionary baggage and bluff

Like all organisms, mantis shrimp carry baggage from their evolutionary history. Find out how this baggage has coaxed them into a deadly bluffing game.

• Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

Time: Seven 50-minute class periods

In this advanced 4-lesson curriculum unit, students examine evidence to compare four different explanations for why many malarial parasites are resistant to antimalarial drugs; investigate how scientific arguments using G6PD data show support for natural selection in humans; design an investigation using a simulation based on the Hardy-Weinberg principle to explore mechanisms of evolution; and apply their understanding to other alleles that have evolved in response to malaria.

Testing a hypothesis

Students watch a short film about natural selection in humans and answer questions on a worksheet that reinforce the evolutionary story behind malaria and sickle cell anemia prevalence.

Making 3D phylogenetic trees with mobiles

Students create three-dimensional trees in the form of mobiles so that the branching nodes pivot. Students can manipulate the mobile to see the relationships more clearly and combat common misconceptions about trees.

Tennis Shoe Detectives

• Heindel, Sharon

Time: Two 40-minute periods

Students make observations, examine data, and form hypotheses about a set of footprints and what they can tell us.

Teaching the Process of Molecular Phylogeny and Systematics: A Multi-Part Inquiry-Based Exercise

• Lents, Nathan, et al

Time: 1 to 4 periods

Students explore molecular data from Homo sapiens and four related primates and develop hypotheses regarding the ancestry of these five species by analyzing DNA sequences, protein sequences, and chromosomal maps.

Taster’s Choice

Students taste foods and graph their likes and dislikes.

Lines of evidence: The science of evolution

The theory of evolution is broadly accepted by scientists — and for good reason! Learn about the diverse and numerous lines of evidence that support the theory of evolution.

It’s All Relative

In this lesson, students find pictures of living things and arrange them in collages, categorizing them according to which they think are more closely related to which.

It takes teamwork: How endosymbiosis changed life on Earth

You might be surprised to learn that descendants of an ancient bacterium are living in every cell of your body! Find out how endosymbiosis factored into the evolution of your own cells and learn about a modern example of this process.

Island biogeography and evolution: Solving a phylogenetic puzzle using molecular genetics

• Filson, R.P.

Time: Two full class periods

Students focus on the evolution of three species of lizards using real data sets — geographical and geological data, then morphology, and finally molecular data — to determine possible phylogenetic explanations.

Investigating Natural Selection

Students experience one mechanism for evolution through a simulation that models the principles of natural selection and helps answer the question: How might biological change have occurred and been reinforced over time?

Investigating Common Descent: Formulating Explanations and Models

Students formulate explanations and models that simulate structural and biochemical data as they investigate the misconception that humans evolved from apes.

Interpreting the Tracks

Time: Two to three class periods

Students discover the relationships among foot length, leg length, stride length and speed in bipedal animals that provide clues about dinosaur speed.

Interactive investigation: The arthropod story

Time: 3-4 class periods

This interactive investigation delves into the amazing world of the arthropods and examines their success and their evolutionary constraints.

Inferring Ancient Environments from Fossil Foraminifera

• Olson, Hilary

Students analyze actual data from samples of microfossils collected from a particular locality. They use this data to infer water depths in the Miocene in order to locate potential petroleum reserves.

In the Dark

Students, in pairs, go on a trust walk to use senses other than vision.

How to survive a mass extinction: The work of David Jablonski

Through detailed analysis of patterns in the fossil record, scientist David Jablonski reconstructs the rules that helped dictate who lived and died in past mass extinctions. This research profile describes his surprising discoveries and their disturbing implications for the biodiversity crisis today.

How Much is a Billion

Time: Variable

In this activity, students get a sense of how big a billion really is, which is necessary in order to understand deep time.

How Did Plants Change Our Planet?

Time: 5 minutes

Botanist Dr. Nathalie Nagalingum explains how, more than 400 million years ago, early plants played a notable role in adjusting Earth's physical surface as well as our planet's climate. She meets with paleobotanist Dr. Cindy Looy to discuss the evidence that scientists currently have to support her story.

How boogieing birds evolved: The work of Kim Bostwick

This research profile follows ornithologist Kim Bostwick through the jungles of Ecuador and the halls of museums as she investigates the evolution of an exotic bird's complex mating dance.

How are humans related to other primates?

• Kalinowski, Steven

Time: Two lab periods

In this two-part laboratory students analyze skull morphology and DNA sequences among primate species to answer one of the most meaningful questions in biology: How are humans related to other animals?

Hominid Cranium Comparison (The “Skulls” Lab)

Students describe, measure and compare cranial casts from contemporary apes, modern humans, and fossil hominids to discover some of the similarities and differences between these forms and to see the pattern leading to modern humans.

History of evolutionary thought

In this section, you will see how study in four disciplinary areas — Earth's history, life's history, mechanisms of evolution, and development and genetics — has contributed to our current understanding of evolution.

High altitude adaptations: The work of Emilia Huerta-Sánchez

This research profile follows statistician and population geneticist Emilia Huerta-Sánchez as she studies the adaptations that allow Tibetan highlanders to live 13,000 feet above sea level without developing altitude sickness.

Getting into the Fossil Record

In this interactive module students are introduced to fossils and the fossilization process by examining how fossils are formed and the factors that promote or prevent fossilization.

Gene switches

Time: Two 45-minute blocks

This lesson explains how genetic switches function and their role in the process of evolution through the use of clips from the HHMI DVD, Evolution: Constant Change and Common Threads, and the construction of a model. This activity can be done as a demonstration, a student inquiry activity, or a combination of the two.

Using trees to uproot HIV: The work of Satish Pillai

This research profile follows scientist Satish Pillai as he studies the evolution of HIV within infected individuals. His research uses the tools of phylogenetics to investigate vaccine development and the possibility of curing the disease.

Using trees to understand plants: The work of Chelsea Specht

This research profile follows scientist Chelsea Specht as she pieces together the evolutionary history of tropical plants and their pollinators--and in the process, tries to figure out how to conserve endangered species.

Using pipe cleaners to bring the Tree of Life to life

• American Biology Teacher

Students build a phylogenetic tree from pipe cleaners that allows them to rotate branches, compare topologies, map complete lineages, identify informative phylogenetic features, and examine the effects of superficial structural changes on the tree.

From the origin of life to the future of biotech: The work of Andy Ellington

This research profile examines how scientist Andy Ellington has co-opted the power of artificial selection to construct new, useful molecules in his lab. The results of his work could help protect us from terrorist attacks and fight HIV and cancer.

Form and Function

Time: One period

Students select a part of a plant or animal and indicate how the part supports the needs of the living thing.

Fire ants invade and evolve

Understanding the evolution of fire ants may help scientists control the spread of these pests, which have already taken over much of the U.S.

Eye Evolution

Time: 45-60 minutes

This worksheet guides students through an interactive online module entitled Why the Eye? on the Understanding Evolution website. Students gain a better understanding of the different types of animal eyes and how natural selection can account for the evolution of a complex organ.

Understanding Macroevolution Through Evograms

Evograms convey information about how a group of organisms and their particular features evolved. This article explains how to read evograms and delves into the evolutionary history of whales, tetrapods, mammals, birds, and humans.

Students are shown illustrations of living things and extinct life forms, which they compare and categorize as living or extinct.

Evolutionary trees from the tabloids and beyond

This article describes practical applications of phylogenetics, focusing on intriguing cases ripe for deployment in classrooms — like using phylogenetics to investigate crimes. This article appears at SpringerLink.

Evolutionary trees and patterns in the history of life

Scientists use many different lines of evidence to reconstruct the evolutionary trees that show how species are related. This article is located within Evolution 101 .

Evolution connection: Transcription and translation

• Evo Connection slide set

This short slide set relates the role of RNA in the processes of transcription and translation to RNA's evolutionary history and the remnants of the RNA world. Save the slide set to your computer to view the explanation and notes that go along with each slide.

Evolution connection: The Krebs Cycle

This short slide set explains the uniformity of the Krebs cycle across all life using evolutionary theory. Save the slide set to your computer to view the explanation and notes that go along with each slide.

Evolution connection: Ribosomes

This short slide set explains how some antibiotics target the bacterial ribosome and don't attack the ribosomes in our own cells through a quirk of evolutionary history. Save the slide set to your computer to view the explanation and notes that go along with each slide.

Evolution connection: Proteins, carbohydrates, and nucleic acids

This short slide set weaves basic information about carbohydrates, proteins, and nucleic acids into one evolutionary story regarding the evolution of lactose tolerance, which relates to students' everyday lives. Save the slide set to your computer to view the explanation and notes that go along with each slide.

Evolution connection: Photosynthesis 2

This short slide set explains uniformity and variation in the process of photosynthesis across all life using evolutionary history. Save the slide set to your computer to view the explanation and notes that go along with each slide.

Evolution connection: Photosynthesis 1

This short slide set explains the existence of photorespiration using evolutionary history. Save the slide set to your computer to view the explanation and notes that go along with each slide.

Evolution connection: Mitochondria and plastids

This short slide set describes how many characteristics of mitochondria and plastids are explained by their endosymbiotic origins. Save the slide set to your computer to view the explanation and notes that go along with each slide.

Evolution of human skin color

Time: Seven to ten 50 minute class periods

Students examine evidence for the relationship between UV and melanin in other animals; investigate the genetic basis for constitutive skin color humans; learn to test for natural selection in mouse fur color; investigate how interactions between UV and skin color in humans can affect fitness; and explore data on migrations and gene frequency to show convergent evolution of skin color.

Evolution connection: DNA replication

This short slide set explains the fidelity of DNA replication in evolutionary terms. Save the slide set to your computer to view the explanation and notes that go along with each slide.

Evolution and Phylogenetic Analysis

• Wilfred A. Franklin

Time: Two 3-hour sessions

In a flexible multisession laboratory, students investigate concepts of phylogenetic analysis at both the molecular and the morphological level. Students finish by conducting their own analysis on a collections skeletons using the Mesquite software.

Evolution and health: What is a mismatch disease?

In this reading-, writing-, and discussion-based activity, students learn about how changes in the environment can influence the phenotype of organisms. More specifically, students will be investigating the concept of a mismatch disease and how it relates to many present human phenotypes that are no longer beneficial.

Evolution and E. coli: Natural selection in a constant environment

In this reading-, writing-, and discussion-based activity, students explore bacterial evolution occurring in a stable environment, which counters the intuitive misconception that environmental change is a necessary component to natural selection. A landmark study provides the backdrop against which students can challenge their thinking about what it means for a population to evolve.

Evolution and Antibiotic Resistance

Time: One to three class periods

Students learn why evolution is at the heart of a world health threat by investigating the increasing problem of antibiotic resistance in such menacing diseases as tuberculosis.

Evolution 101

Time: multiple days

This in-depth, multi-part course takes you through evolutionary theory and mechanisms, from definitions to details, natural selection to genetic drift, mutations to punctuated equilibrium.

Evolución 101

¿Qué es la evolución y cómo funciona? Introducción a la evolución ofrece información detallada y práctica sobre los patrones y los mecanismos de la evolución.

Understanding Geologic Time

Time: One class period.

A web-based module in which students gain a basic understanding of geologic time, the evidence for events in Earth's history, relative and absolute dating techniques, and the significance of the Geologic Time Scale.

Understanding evolutionary trees

Many disciplines within biology (and many basic biology texts) have come to depend on evolutionary trees. Get the basics you need to understand and interpret these key diagrams. This article appears at SpringerLink.

Understanding evolutionary history: An introduction to tree thinking

• Laura Novick, Kefyn Catley, and Emily Schreiber

Time: 30 min - 1 hour

This pamphlet with self-quizzes provides students with a self-paced tutorial in tree thinking and corrects many common misconceptions about phylogenetic trees.

Understanding the process of development can help us understand how some major evolutionary changes occurred and why others did not.

Evo in the news: Where species come from

Lush tropical ecosystems house many times more species than temperate or Arctic regions. This news brief from November 2006 discusses the evolutionary explanation for this diversity trend and reveals why threats to tropical ecosystems may threaten diversity on a global scale.

Evo in the news: Where did all of Madagascar’s species come from?

Recently, political unrest in Madagascar has threatened to set back the island's expanding conservation efforts, and criminals have taken advantage of the instability, looting protected forests for rare wood. This news story from October 2009 turns back the clock to consider the biogeographic processes that made Madagascar into a biodiversity hotspot in the first place.

Evo in the news: When it comes to evolution, headlines often get it wrong

Newly discovered fossils are prompting some scientists to consider a minor revision of the relationships shown on the human family tree. This news brief from September 2007 clarifies the occasionally misleading news coverage of the story.

Evo in the News: When fighting leukemia, evolutionary history matters

This news brief, from December 2011, describes how evolutionary history can factor into the success of a bone marrow transplant.

Evo in the news: What has the head of a crocodile and the gills of a fish?

This news brief, from May 2006, reviews what is likely to be the most important fossil find of the year: Tiktaalik helps us understand how our own ancestors crawled out of the water and began to walk on dry land.

Evo in the News: What comes after mass extinctions?

This news brief, from September 2012, describes the aftermath of mass extinctions--what happens to surviving species in the wake of a massive extinction event.

Evo in the news: Warming to evolution

Global warming increasingly affects many aspects of our environment, from the sea level to tropical storm strength. But that's far from the full story. This news brief from July 2006 describes how global warming has already begun to affect the evolution of several species on Earth.

Evo in the news: Tracking SARS back to its source

This news brief, from January of 2006, traces the source of the SARS virus. Using phylogenetics, biologists have come up with a plausible path of transmission which may help us prevent future outbreaks of diseases such as HIV, SARS, and West Nile virus.

Evo in the news: Toxic river means rapid evolution for one fish species

This news brief from March 2011 examines the genetic basis for the evolution of resistance to PCBs in the Hudson River tomcod. Though this is great for the tomcod, what might it mean for other organisms in the ecosystem?

Evo in the news: Tough conservation choices? Ask evolution

The earth is facing a biodiversity crisis. Nearly 50% of animal and plant species could disappear within our lifetime. To stem this rapid loss of biodiversity, we'll need to act quickly — but where should we begin? This news brief, from December 2008, explains how evolutionary history can help us set conservation priorities.

Evo in the news: The recent roots of dental disease

This news brief from March 2013 describes new research suggesting that human dietary changes associated with the invention of agriculture and the Industrial Evolution caused an epidemic of tooth decay and gum disease. This link between diet and oral health is an example of a mismatch to modernity, a case in which a disease results from a modern lifestyle feature that our lineage has not experienced during the course of its evolutionary history.

Visualizing life on Earth: Data interpretation in evolution

Time: 2 hours

This web-based module leads students through an exploration of the patterns in the diversity of life across planet Earth. Students are scaffolded as they practice data interpretation and scientific reasoning skills.

Evo in the news: The other green (r)evolution

Though corn is "all-natural" in some ways, in others it is entirely manmade. This news brief from February 2007 explains the evolutionary tools that ancient humans used to engineer modern corn and the tools that scientists are using today to reconstruct corn's evolutionary history.

Evo in the news: The new shrew that’s not

This news brief from March of 2008 describes scientists' discovery of a new mammal species, a giant elephant shrew. Though elephant shrews resemble regular shrews, recent genetic evidence suggests that elephant shrews actually sprang from a much older (and perhaps more charismatic) branch of the tree of life - the one belonging to elephants and their relatives.

Viruses and Host Evolution

• Chamberlain, Don

Time: Four class periods

Students learn about natural selection in rabbits by observing the effects of a virus on the Australian rabbit population.

Evo in the news: The legless lizards of LAX

This news brief from October 2013 describes the discovery of four new species of legless lizard. Why don't we just call these animals snakes? Because of their evolutionary history...

Evo in the news: The evolutionary history of jogging

This news brief from March 2010 describes a new fitness trend: barefoot running. Though it might sound like just another fitness fad, soon to go the way of hula-hoops or jazzercise, this trend has a surprising connection to evolution.

Evo in the news: The evidence lines up in early mammal evolution

This news brief, from September 2011, describes the discovery of a new mammal species that highlights just how long mammals have been around. Back in the Jurassic, dinosaurs may have dominated terrestrial ecosystems, but they were not alone. Scurrying around their feet and clinging to the trees above them were the fuzzy ancestors of their successors.

Evo in the news: Superbug, super-fast evolution

Methicillin-resistant staph infections now contribute to more US deaths than does HIV. This news brief from April of 2008 explains the quirks of bacterial evolution that make them such a threat.

Evo in the news: Spreading disease on evolutionary timescales

Most infectious diseases that we are familiar with are passed from human to human; however, on evolutionary timescales, pathogens don't necessarily respect species boundaries. This news brief from November 2010 examines a recently discovered case of disease swapping among species involving a deadly strain of malaria.

Evo in the news: Speciation in real time

We often think of speciation as a slow process, so slow that we can't really observe it going on around us. This news brief from Febrary 2010 describes two examples which demonstrate that, at least occasionally, important steps toward speciation can be observed in less than 50 years.

Evo in the news: Sex, speciation, and fishy physics

More than 500 species of cichlid fish inhabit Africa's Lake Victoria. This news brief from March 2009 explains new research suggesting that the physics of light may have played an important role in cichlid diversification and in the recent drop in their diversity.

Evo in the news: Seeing the tree for the twigs

Recent research has revealed that, in at least some ways, chimpanzees have evolved more than humans have. This news brief from May 2007 delves into this finding further and, in the process, debunks common misperceptions of human evolution.

Variations in the clam species Clamys sweetus

Time: 3 x 45-minute sessions

This series of hands-on activities complements the HHMI DVD Evolution: Constant Change and Common Threads and has been designed to engage students in thinking about the mechanism of natural selection by encouraging them to formulate questions that can be answered through scientific investigation, data collection, and pattern recognition.

Evo in the news: Quick evolution leads to quiet crickets

The tropical island of Kauai has always been a quiet place, but now it may be getting even more quiet. This news brief, from December 2006, reveals how Kauai's cricket population has evolved into a "chirpless" variety in just a few years.

Evo in the news: Quick bites and quirky adaptations

Trap-jaw ants made headlines with the record-breaking speed of their jaws and a quirky behavior: flinging themselves into the air using the power of their mandibles. This news brief from October 2006 reveals the evolutionary story behind the headlines.

Evo in the news: Oxygen as an evolutionary constraint

This news brief from November 2009 focuses on how changes in atmospheric chemistry may have factored into the evolution of life on Earth, specifically, life's quadrillion-fold growth spurt from microscopic bacteria to organisms the size of the blue whale.

Evo in the news: One small fossil, one giant step for polar bear evolution

This news brief from April 2010 describes what scientists have learned by extracting DNA from a polar bear fossil more than 100,000 years old. Though the fossil itself was just a fragment of the skeleton -the lower left portion of the jaw, still containing a tooth- the DNA had a lot to say about polar bear evolution.

Evo in the news: No more mystery meat

This news brief from April 2013 describes new research on the origin of American cattle breeds. The story told by the cows' genes crisscrosses the trajectory of human evolutionary history from wild aurochs that lived alongside Neanderthals, to Christopher Columbus and, ultimately, the American West.

Evo in the news: Musseling in on evolution

This news brief, from September 2006, reviews a recent case of evolution in action. In just 15 years, mussels have evolved in response to an invasive crab species. Find out how biologists uncovered this example of evolution on double time.

Evo in the news: More than morphology

This news brief, from August 2006, describes recent research on T. rex , with a special focus on how paleontologists move beyond the shape of the animal's bones to learn about aspects of its life that don't fossilize very well: its physiology, sensory abilities, and population dynamics.

Evo in the news: Making sense of ancient hominin DNA

In March 2010 German researchers announced that they had managed to extract DNA from the 40,000 year old fossil bone from a child discovered in a Siberian cave and that it didn't match up to the known genetic sequences of either humans or Neanderthals! This news brief examines the evidence in more detail and considers what that evidence might — or might not — mean about such claims.

Students look at populations of living things and identify variations in physical features.

Variability and Selection in Natural Populations of Wood Lice

• Berkelhamer, Rudi

Time: 3-hour lab

In this lab, students measure the amount of variation in a natural population of terrestrial wood lice and then determine which traits are subject to selection by predators by performing a simulated predation experiment.

Evo in the news: Livestock kick a drug habit

This news brief, from September of 2005, describes the FDA ban on the use of the antibiotic Baytril in poultry production. The decision was made in order to reduce the danger presented by the evolution of antibiotic resistant bacteria.

Evo in the News: Lessons for today in ancient mass extinctions

This news brief, from May 2012, describes new research on the end-Ordovician mass extinction and the lessons we might glean about extinctions going on around us today.

Evo in the news: Influenza, an ever-evolving target for vaccine development

Some vaccines provide lifelong protection with one or a few doses, but the flu requires a new shot every year. And in some years, the flu shot is hardly effective at all. Why is the flu vaccine different from so many other vaccines? This news brief from February 2013 provides the evolutionary explanation.

Evo in the News: Hybrid sharks aren’t “trying” to adapt

This news brief, from February 2012, describes the discovery of hybrid sharks in Australian waters, debunks some common misconceptions regarding the discovery, and examines the possible evolutionary trajectories of these animals.

Evo in the news: Hotspots for evolution

Why are there so many different species in the tropics? This news brief, from June 2006, suggests why: warmer weather may be linked to a quicker pace for evolution.

Evo in the news: HIV’s not-so-ancient history

First described in 1981, HIV is a distinctly modern disease. But for how long before its discovery did HIV lurk unnoticed in human populations? This news brief from November 2008 describes new research offering insight into when (and how) HIV got its start.

Evo in the news: Happy 200th, Darwin!

This news brief, from February 2009, celebrates Darwin's bicentennial by examining what we've learned about the evolution of the Galapagos finches since Darwin's time.

Evo in the News: Grasshoppers change their tune. Is it evolution in action?

This news brief, from December 2012, describes new research into how traffic noise affects insect populations. Several hypotheses to explain the change in grasshoppers' songs are examined.

Evo in the news: Got lactase?

The ability to digest milk is a recent evolutionary innovation that has spread through some human populations. This news brief from April 2007 describes how evolution has allowed different human populations to take advantage of the nutritional possibilities of dairying and links evolution with the prevalence of lactose tolerance among people of different ethnicities.

Evo in the news: Ghosts of epidemics past

HIV and malaria both constitute global health threats, respectively affecting more than 30 million and 200 million people worldwide. This news brief from October 2008 describes new research that reveals an unexpected evolutionary link between the two.

Evo in the news: Genetic variation helps rescue endangered panthers

In the 1990s, scientists predicted that the Florida panther would be extinct within 20 years and, in 1995, formulated a bold plan to save them. This news brief of December 2010 reports on the success of that plan which gave the panther a second lease on life by the infusion of genetic variation.

Evo in the news: Genealogy enthusiasts mine DNA for clues to evolutionary history

This news brief, from November 2007, turns an evolutionary lens on businesses that use DNA for genealogy research and, in the process, illuminates what their genetic tests really track.

Evo in the news: Gender-biased bacteria throw off an evolutionary balance

The percentage of southwestern whiteflies infected with Rickettsia bacteria has skyrocketed; but this is not a boon for local farmers, as the bacterium actively helps the pest spread. This news brief examines how evolutionary theory accounts for this and how we might turn it in our favor.

Evo in the news: Fighting the evolution of malaria in Cambodia

This news brief from December 2009 focuses on one of the world's most deadly infectious diseases: malaria. Malaria is normally treatable, but now some strains are evolving resistance to our most effective drug. Find out how researchers and doctors are trying to control the evolution of the disease.

Evo in the news: Evolving conservation strategies

This news brief, from June 2007, explains how biologists are using evolutionary theory to protect the biodiversity that exists today and that may evolve tomorrow.

Evo in the news: Evolving altitude aptitude

This news brief from October 2010 examines new research that makes it clear that Tibetan highlanders have not just acclimated to their mountain home; evolutionary adaptations have equipped them with unique physiological mechanisms for dealing with low oxygen levels.

Evo in the News: Evolutionary history in a tiny package

This news brief, from March 2012, describes the discovery four new species — all miniature chameleons — and explores the concept of island dwarfism.

Evo in the news: Evolutionary evidence takes the stand

This news brief, from January of 2007, describes the role of phylogenetic evidence in a Libyan court case. Six medical workers have been convicted of injecting children with HIV-tainted blood - but the evolutionary history of the virus paints a different picture.

Evo in the news: Evolution’s dating and mating game

This news brief from May of 2008 describes new research on octopus mating and reveals how evolution can favor some surprising courtship behaviors.

Evo in the news: Evolution in the fast lane?

Have humans, with all of our technological advances, exempted ourselves from further evolution? Perhaps not. This news brief, from February 2008, examines genetic research which suggests that human evolution may haved actually accelerated in our recent history.

Evo in the news: Evolution from a virus’s view

This news brief from December 2007 describes a new virulent strain of the common cold and examines how and why virulence evolves.

Evo in the news: Evolution down under

This news brief, from September of 2008, describes an unusual contagious cancer currently decimating Tasmanian devil populations. Learn about the fascinating interplay between the evolution of the devils and the evolution of the disease.

Evo in the news: Evolution at the scene of the crime

This news brief, from March 2006, describes how DNA fingerprinting is being used to prosecute and exonerate the accused. DNA fingerprinting relies on the processes of mutation and genome evolution.

Evo in the news: Evolution and the avian flu

This news brief, from November of 2005, describes the threat of avian flu. The stage is set for this virus to evolve into a strain that could cause a deadly global pandemic.

Evo in the news: Coping with climate change

This news brief from May 2009 explores the difference between phenotypic plasticity and evolutionary change in relation to the media's coverage of climate change.

Evo in the news: Conserving the kakapo

This news brief, from April 2006, chronicles how researchers are using evolutionary theory to guide their strategies for conserving a critically endangered parrot - with some impressive results!

Evo in the News: Climate change causes loss of genetic diversity

This news brief, from April 2012, describes how climate change is affecting a population of chipmunks in Yosemite National Park. The chipmunks' loss of genetic variation may affect their ability to survive and their future evolutionary potential.

Evo in the news: Cheating cheetahs prosper

Biologists have discovered that female cheetahs consistently seek out multiple mates. This news brief, from July 2007, explains how the evolutionary implications of this behavior may help conservation efforts targeting these endangered animals.

Evo in the news: Better biofuels through evolution

This news brief from April 2009 describes how synthetic biologists are using the process of directed evolution to improve the efficiency of biofuel production.

Evo in the news: Bed bugs bite back thanks to evolution

This news brief of September 2010 examines the resurgence of bed bugs throughout the country, and the real bad news is that those bed bugs have evolved resistance to the chemicals most commonly used for eradication.

Evo in the news: Bad at estimating? Blame evolution

Scientists have long noted the universality of the size-weight illusion and formulated different hypotheses to explain it. Now new research suggests that this error may actually be an adaptation with roots in an important but sometimes overlooked aspect of human evolution: throwing skill.

Evo in the news: Antibiotic resistant bacteria at the meat counter

This news brief from May 2013 describes research showing that a large percentage of the meat in supermarkets is contaminated with antibiotic resistant bacteria. An evolutionary perspective explains how antibiotic resistance arises in the first place and why the prevalence of resistant bugs in livestock has health professionals and scientists worried.

Evo in the news: Another perspective on cancer

This news brief, from October of 2007, describes the evolutionary underpinnings of cancer. Recognizing cancer as a form of cellular evolution helps explain why a cure remains elusive and points the way toward new treatments.

Evo in the news: An antibiotic that exploits evolutionary history

In October 2011, the World Health Organization announced that tuberculosis cases are on the decline for the first time in at least 20 years. Our battle against this ancient disease has been fought, in part, through the use of antibiotics like streptomycin. This news brief describes the 1.8 billion year evolutionary history behind these drugs.

Evo in the News: Acidic oceans prompt evolution

This news brief, from October 2012, describes new research into the evolutionary response that ocean acidification may prompt in some plankton species.

Evo in the news: A species’ unwelcome inheritance – extinction risk

Even as the world loses species at an unprecedented rate, conservationists are struggling to save them. But where should they focus their efforts? This news brief from September 2009 describes new research suggesting that evolutionary history is an important factor in determining which species are at the gravest risk of extinction.

Evo in the news: A new old animal

A new species of velvet worm was recently discovered in Vietnam. This news brief from September 2013 describes the key position of velvet worms in evolutionary history and how they help us better understand the fossil record of the Cambrian period.

Evo in the News: A new look at dinosaur fossils pushes back the evolution of feathered wings

This news brief, from November 2012, describes what a new dinosaur fossil from North America has to tell us about the evolution of feathers.

Evo in the news: A fish of a different color

This news brief, from February 2006, describes how a mutated zebrafish gene may help us understand human evolution and the genes underlying human skin color. Humans and zebrafish both inherited the same pigmentation gene from their common ancestor.

Evo in the news: A chink in HIV’s evolutionary armor

Medical researchers have spent billions of dollars and many decades trying to develop an HIV vaccine but have, thus far, failed. Why is an HIV vaccine so elusive? This news brief from March 2007 explains how HIV's rapid rate of evolution challenges medicine and describes a new discovery that may allow vaccine developers to sidestep that evolution.

Evo in the news: “Superweed” discovered in Britain?

This news brief, from October of 2005, describes the discovery of an herbicide resistant weed in Britain and illustrates the relationship between genetic engineering and evolution.

Evo in the News: “Error. Greed does not compute.”

This news brief from May 2011 describes how researchers are using tiny robots to study the evolution of altruistic behaviors.

Dogs and Turnips

Time: 30 minutes each for three sessions

In this lesson students attempt to assemble a meaningful sentence by successively turning over cards with words on them. The point is made that we change our ideas of what a story may be as we gather more information.

Diversity Walk

In this lesson, students take a walk around the school grounds to discover the diversity of life that exists there.

Students learn that there are many forms of living things by going for a walk and by observing living things in the classroom.

Discovering mass extinctions in the fossil record

This activity (suitable for distance learning) is designed to introduce students to the nature and process of science through the discovery of mass extinctions in the fossil record. Students will explore the fossil record of brachiopods and bivalves using the Paleobiological Database, identify patterns in their data, and generate and evaluate hypotheses. They will also document this process using the Understanding Science flowchart. Clicking the link above will download the Word file for this lesson.

Time: Two class periods.

Students are presented with a set of data about dinosaurs and are asked to make hypotheses about what the data can tell us.

Differences

Students observe and compare a variety of living things and pictures of living things to observe their similarities and differences.

Determining Age of Rocks and Fossils

• McKinney, Frank

In this series of lessons students learn the basic principles used to determine the age of rocks and fossils by using half-life in radioactive decay and stratigraphy.

Darwin’s Great Voyage of Discovery

Students learn about Darwin's voyage on the Beagle by reading excerpts from his letters and journals and mapping his route.

CSI: Olduvai Gorge. The work of Jackson Njau

This research profile follows paleoanthropologist Jackson Njau as he investigates ancient predators, like crocodiles and large cats, in an effort to understand how these organisms shaped the evolution of our human ancestors.

Coping with Environmental Differences

Time: One class period for initial set up. Approx. 10-15 minutes for daily observations.

Students will observe and conduct an experiment to see whether differences in salinity (the environment) have an affect on the hatching rate and survival of brine shrimp.

Comic strip: Survival of the sneakiest

This comic follows the efforts of a male cricket as he tries to attract a mate, and in the process, debunks common myths about what it means to be evolutionarily "fit."

Color variation over time in rock pocket mouse populations

Students watch a short film and complete a worksheet and graphing exercise that reinforces the concepts of variation and natural selection.

Students learn about variation, reproductive isolation, natural selection, and adaptation through this version of the bird beak activity.

Climate Analysis Using Planktonic Foraminifera

Students manipulate, plot, and interpret data on the occurence of a particular species of foraminifera in the fossil record in order to infer changes in climate during the last 160,000 years.

Classification and Evolution

Students construct an evolutionary tree of imaginary animals (Caminalcules) to illustrate how modern classification schemes attempt to reflect evolutionary history.

Chimpanzee Droppings Lead Scientists to Evolutionary Discovery

• Kosal, Erica F.

Time: 1.5 to 2 hours

Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV) is thought to be a precursor to HIV. This multi-part case study explores changes in SIV in different chimpanzee populations and how researchers use this information to test hypotheses about the origins of HIV.

Cells within cells: An extraordinary claim with extraordinary evidence

• Understanding Science

When biologist Lynn Margulis revived the strange-sounding idea that the merging of cells played a prominent role in the evolution of complex life, the scientific community roundly rejected the notion. Today, this idea is accepted as a textbook fact. Learn more about the evidence and social factors that spurred the acceptance of this key aspect of evolutionary theory. This article is available from the Understanding Science website.

Candy Dish Selection

• Tang, Carol

Students find that selection occurs in a dish of mixed candies.

Bringing homologies into focus

There's more to homologies and analogies than the iconic examples (e.g., the tetrapod limb) found in every high school textbook. This article goes beyond the basics to explore the many evolutionary scenarios that result in homoplasies and the many levels at which homologies might occur. This article appears at SpringerLink.

Breeding Bunnies

Students simulate breeding bunnies to show the impact that genetics can have on the evolution of a population of organisms.

Born to Run: Artificial Selection Lab

• Garland, Theodore

Time: Four 45-minute periods

Students are introduced to the field of experimental evolution by evaluating skeletal changes in mice that have been artificially selected over many generations for the behavioral trait of voluntary exercise wheel running.

Biological warfare and the coevolutionary arms race

The rough-skinned newt looks harmless enough but is, in fact, packed full of one of the most potent neurotoxins known to man. Find out how an evolutionary arms race has pushed these mild-mannered critters to the extremes of toxicity and how evolutionary biologists have unraveled their fascinating story.

Artificially Selecting Dogs

Time: 90 minutes

Students learn how artificial selection can be used to develop new dog breeds with characteristics that make the dogs capable of performing a desirable task.

Anolis Lizards

Students "take a trip" to the Greater Antilles to figure out how the Anolis lizards on the islands might have evolved.

Angling for evolutionary answers: The work of David O. Conover

Human activity has certainly affected our physical environment - but it is also changing the course of evolution. This research profile follows scientist David O. Conover as he investigates the impact of our fishing practices on fish evolution and discovers what happened to the big ones that got away.

Ancient fossils and modern climate change: The work of Jennifer McElwain

Wondering how global warming will affect our planet? Scientist Jennifer McElwain studies the fossil record in order to learn more about how global warming has affected life on Earth in the past and how it might affect life on Earth in the future.

Ancient Farmers of the Amazon

Time: One to two class periods.

In this activity, students find out about research being conducted on Amazon leafcutter ants. They also watch video segments to make their own virtual field observations and write their own research proposals.

An Antipodal Mystery

• Herreid, Clyde Freeman

Time: 1 to 2 hours, ideally split over multiple class periods

The discovery of the platypus had the scientific world in an uproar with its mammal-like and bird-like features. How was one to classify the platypus? This case study uses this issue to model the scientific process, with scientists arguing, debating, collecting more evidence, and revising their opinions as new data become available.

Aloha, spider style! The work of Rosemary Gillespie

Time: one class period

This research profile follows Dr. Rosemary Gillespie to Hawaii as she evaluates hypotheses about the evolution of the colorful happy-face spider.

Allele and phenotype frequencies in rock pocket mouse populations

Time: One or two class 50-minute periods

This video and worksheet use real rock pocket mouse data collected by Dr. Michael Nachman and his colleagues to illustrate the Hardy-Weinberg principle.

Adventures at Dry Creek

Time: Three to four class periods.

In this interactive web-based module students conduct a simulated field study at a fossil dig in Montana.

Adaptation: The case of penguins

• Visionlearning

The process of natural selection produces stunning adaptations. Learn about the history of this concept, while you explore the incredible adaptations that penguins have evolved, allowing them to survive and reproduce in a climate that reaches -60°C!

This article appears at Visionlearning.

Why the eye?

Time: 30-45 min

Eyes are something of an icon of evolution. How did such an integrated, multi-part adaptation evolve? While many different animals have complex eyes, untangling their evolutionary history reveals both remarkable diversity and surprising similarity.

What in the World Do You Smell?

Students walk outside to use their sense of smell to discover odors in their world.

What Food Is It?

Students close their eyes and taste foods without using their sense of sight.

Why study the tree of life?

• Peabody Museum of Natural History

Time: 4 minutes

This short video provides several examples of the practical applications of phylogenetics.

This resource is available from the Peabody Museum of Natural History.

Why Sex is Good

Time: portions of several class periods

This case study is based on a 2005 journal article that deals with the issue of sexual vs. asexual reproduction and their relative merits a question that has bedeviled biologists for more than a century. The article serves as the final stage of this case focusing on why sex is useful (at least in some circumstances).

Who’s on First? Relative Dating

• Barber, Marsha and Bartos, Diane

Students sequence familiar items and then do a similar sequencing activity using fossil pictures to learn how paleontologists use fossils to give relative dates to rock strata.

What does it mean to be human?

Time: 8 x 50-minute class periods

In this set of advanced lessons, students use different types of data to infer/interpret phylogenies among domains, within the vertebrates, and within primates while reflecting on how they answer the question "What do you think it means to be human?" and choose a characteristic that changed substantially in the human family tree to develop a scientific argument based on evidence for when the character evolved.

What did T. Rex Taste Like?

Time: 2-4 hours

In this web-based module students are introduced to cladistics, which organizes living things by common ancestry and evolutionary relationships.

What Came First?

Time: 60 minutes

Students sequence actual events in the history of life on Earth and place them on a large timeline.

Webcast: The science of evolution

• New York Times

Evolutionary biologist Sean Carroll introduces the field of Evo-Devo, using examples from fruit flies, butterflies, and icefish to explain how this research is transforming our understanding of evolution.

This video is available from the New York Times website.

Webcast: Selection in action

• Video Lecture

In lecture two of a four part series, evolutionary biologist David Kingsley discusses how just a few small genetic changes can have a big effect on morphology, using examples from maize, dog breeding, and stickleback fish.

This lecture is available from Howard Hughes' BioInteractive website.

Webcast: From butterflies to humans

In lecture four of a four part series, evolutionary biologist Sean Carroll uses the developmental genetics of insects to explain how old genes can learn new tricks and how this can help us understand human evolution.

Webcast: Fossils, genes, and embryos

In lecture three of a four part series, evolutionary biologist David Kingsley examines the original objections to Darwin's theory and shows how modern evidence supports the theory.

Webcast: Endless forms most beautiful

In lecture one of a four part series, evolutionary biologist Sean Carroll discusses Darwin and his two most important ideas: natural selection and common ancestry.

Time: ~40 min

Students play the roles of paleontologists on a dig. They "unearth" a few fossils at a time and attempt to reconstruct the animal the fossils represent.

Can You Tell by Touch?

Students feel inside a bag and use only their sense of touch to describe and identify one of the objects inside the bag.

Can You Match Them?

Students find matching sounds by shaking containers and listening to sounds generated.

Darwin’s “extreme” imperfection?

Darwin used the words "extreme imperfection" to describe the gappy nature of the fossil record - but is this really such a problem? This article delves into the topic of transitional fossils and explores what we have learned about them since Darwin's time.

This article appears at SpringerLink.

Darwin and Wallace: Natural selection

Darwin and Wallace came up with the idea of natural selection, but their idea of how evolution occurs was not without predecessors.

This article is located within  History of Evolutionary Thought .

Big Beans, Little Beans

Students measure and note the variation in the lengths of lima beans. Students then compare the growth rate of different sized beans.

Becoming a fossil

Students make imprints in clay using leaves or shells.

Battling bacterial evolution: The work of Carl Bergstrom

This research profile examines how the scientist Carl Bergstrom uses computer modeling to understand and control the evolution of antibiotic resistant bacteria in hospitals.

Battle of the Beaks

Students learn about adaptive advantage, based on beak function, by simulating birds competing for various foods.

Adaptation to altitude

Time: Eight 50-minute class periods

In this set of sequenced lessons, students learn how to devise an experiment to test the difference between acclimation and adaptation; investigate how scientific arguments show support for natural selection in Tibetans; design an investigation using a simulation based on the Hardy-Weinberg principle to explore mechanisms of evolution; and devise a test for whether other groups of people have adapted to living at high altitudes.

A Survey About Science

Time: 2-3 class periods

Students conduct a survey about the nature of science, laws, theories, hypotheses, scientists, and evolution.

A Strange Fish Indeed: The “Discovery” of a Living Fossil

• Grant, Robert

Time: 50-90 min.

Through a series of fictionalized diary entries, this case recounts the 1939 discovery by Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer (and identification by J.L.B. Smith) of a living coelacanth, a fish believed to have been extinct for 70 million years.

A Pleistocene Puzzle: Extinction in South America

In this comic, you'll follow the investigation of scientists Maria and Miguel as they solve a paleontological mystery. About 11,000 years ago, more than 80% of the large animal species in South America went extinct. Why did it happen? (Available in English and Spanish)

A name by any other tree

Time: 35 minutes

Phylogenetics has affected almost every area of biology - even the most basic one: how we classify organisms. Find out how phylogenetic classification works and what its advantages are.

A look at linguistic evolution

We typically think of evolution occurring within populations of organisms. But in fact, evolutionary concepts can be applied even beyond the biological world. Any system that has variation, differential reproduction, and some form of inheritance will evolve if given enough time. Find out how an understanding of evolution can illuminate the field of linguistics.

A Long Time

The teacher puts up a timeline that shows students' age relative to geologic time.

You will be directed to an external page on the UC Museum of Paleontology website. 

A fisheye view of the tree of life

This interactive phylogeny of the ray-finned fishes lets users dynamically explore the evolution of fish traits, as well as read stories about the evolution of unusual characteristics such as bioluminescence and venom.

A closer look at a classic ring species: The work of Tom Devitt

The Ensatina salamander has been extensively investigated because it is a ring species — a species that demonstrates how geography and the gradual accumulation of genetic differences factor into the process of speciation. Biologist Tom Devitt continues the more than 50 years of Ensatina research by applying new genetic techniques and asking new questions about this classic evolutionary example.

Especiación en tiempo real

Generalmente, pensamos en la especiación como un proceso lento. Toda la evidencia disponible sostiene la idea de que diferentes especies evolucionaron desde ancestros comunes, y sin embargo, nuevas especies no aparecen a nuestro alrededor diariamente. Para muchos biólogos, esto implica que la especiación ocurre tan lentamente que es difícil observarla en escalas de tiempo humanas. Sin embargo, nuevas investigaciones sugieren que la especiación podria ser más fácil de observar de lo que pensamos.

¿Eres un mal estimador? La culpa es de la evolución

La próxima vez que estés en la cocina, prueba este experimento: toma una caja de manteca en una mano y una caja de galletas saladas en tu otra mano. ¿Cuál es más pesada? Si dijiste la manteca, no estás solo. La mayoría de las personas identifica la caja de manteca como el objeto mas pesado — a pesar de que si miras la etiqueta ¡verás que ambas pesan exactamente una libra! ¿Por qué ocurre esto?

¿De donde vienen todas las especies de Madagascar?

Continuando la celebración del tema de Octubre en el Año de la Ciencia, las ciencias de la tierra y el planeta Tierra, la historia de este mes se centra en cómo la geografía y la geología han moldeado la evolución de la vida en uno de los lugares más singulares de la Tierra. Madagascar, la cuarta isla más grande del mundo, se encuentra en el Océano índico a varios cientos de kilómetros de la costa sureste de áfrica y constituye el hogar de una notable variedad de especies vegetales y animales, incluido el aye aye, la fossa, el camaleón y el árbol baobab...

Las chinches de cama pican de nuevo gracias a la evolución

Las chinches de cama puede parecer un viejo problema pasado de moda, sin embargo ahora están de vuelta — y con venganza. Hace cincuenta años, estas plagas chupadoras de sangre estaban casi erradicadas en los Estados Unidos gracias, en parte, al uso de pesticidas como el DDT. Hoy, se arrastran entre las sabanas — y atormentan a los desgraciados soñadores — en todo el país...

Juego evolutivo de citas y apareamiento

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Why Teach Evolution?

From the early 20th century onward, teaching biological evolution in the public schools has been a contentious issue. Although a series of federal court decisions has upheld the proper place of biological evolution in the curriculum, the struggle over evolution in the curriculum continues. Recent conflicts over the content of science education standards in many states have arisen precisely because evolution was awarded its proper status as the fundamental theoretical construct underpinning modern biology. Why does teaching evolution remain so socially and politically controversial? Is it "fair" to teach only evolution in public schools? Does this policy help or does it harm the students in these schools?

What is biological evolution?

In the biological sciences, evolution is a theory of change that accounts for the pattern of similarities and differences among living things on earth throughout the earth’s history and across all the habitats and biomes that exist or have existed in that history. Evolution is a theory of emergence of new varieties of life forms, not a "theory of origins" that accounts for how life began. There are currently a number of proposed models and hypotheses for the beginning of life as we know it, but evolution begins after life is established on earth.

What about macroevolution?

Scientists use the terms macroevolution and microevolution to describe different perspectives on life’s history, not fundamentally different processes. Macroevolution describes the result of evolutionary changes we can observe over time in response to mass extinctions, global climate changes, and other large-scale events that affect the abundance and distribution of species. Macroevolution is what we see in the fossil record as forms of life change from one geological time to another, and we see organisms that share features both with organisms that appeared earlier in time and also with organisms that emerge later. These transitional states show the continuity between groups of organisms even while they demonstrate that changes that occur among them. So, in macroevolution, we focus on patterns of evolutionary changes that occur between species, while in microevolution, we focus on patterns of evolutionary changes that occur within species and evolving lineages. These two terms refer to different perspectives on the process of evolutionary change, but not to fundamentally different processes.

Why is evolution mandated in science education standards?

There are two main reasons that biological evolution is mandated in science educations standards. First, it is the fundamental, unifying theory that underlies all the life sciences. It has formed the basis of productive and active research for over 140 years and continues to do so. This is why evolution is universally accepted among professional biology researchers.

The second reason is that science education standards emphasize learning the process of science and especially scientific inquiry. The first step in this process is to develop testable questions that can be answered by scientific investigation. These questions are guided by scientific theories and their answers continue to show the value of biological evolution as a theory for forming useful, answerable questions in biology.

Isn’t evolution only a theory?

A scientific theory is a framework that guides research, not an idle speculation or a "hunch." These theories are systematic, well-tested explanations that account for a broad range of observations. Biological evolution is a scientific theory that explains the pattern and process of variation and similarity among living things in terms of the common ancestry of living organisms. It is a widely accepted and applied theory because it continues to guide useful research and answer new questions even after 140 years.

Why are no other theories required in the science education standards?

Many scientific theories are required in science education standards. For example, students learn atomic theory, which is the foundational theory for understanding the basics of chemistry and physics — including the periodic table of the elements. Other, advanced theories, such as quantum theory, or unsettled ones, such as super-string theory, are less likely to be included. To be included in standards, theories generally must satisfy all three of these criteria: (a) are recognized by the scientific community as settled because of their consistent performance in supporting research for some time; (b) are fundamental to a field of study because they form a unifying framework to help us understand important issues in that field; and (c) can be presented to and understood by students in public schools at various ages because they have the necessary content background and analytical skills to understand them. Not every scientific theory meets all three of these criteria, and those that do not meet all three will not usually appear in the curriculum at this level of study.

What about other scientific "theories of origins?"

A main goal of the science education standards is to teach students how to form questions for successful scientific inquiry. This question is an example of how a misunderstanding of the process of science can undermine this goal. There is no competing scientific theory for the pattern of diversity of life on earth. The terms "theories of origins" and "origins science" are religious ideas that reflect an interventionist theology held by some Christian denominations.

Isn’t evolution controversial?

Biological evolution is a scientifically settled theory. Among scientists, this means that its fundamental principle —the shared ancestry of living organisms —has overcome all scientific challenges. However, the general public is uncomfortable with evolution because of what some people perceive as the moral, or cultural implications of evolution. In most cases, this discomfort results from a poor understanding of evolutionary theory and how it is applied in the sciences. Scientific controversies are resolved by careful scientific inquiry, but moral and political dilemmas can never be resolved only by scientific inquiry. These dilemmas can also never be resolved by ignorance, so it is especially important for students to have a complete and accurate understanding of the contemporary theory of biological evolution.

What about dissenting scientists?

In the past few years, a statement has circulated supposedly expressing new skepticism about evolution: "We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged." [Click here to view the list.] This statement is misleading; it implies that evolutionary theory is based merely on random mutation and natural selection. In the past 140 years, many sources of biological change have been identified and incorporated into evolutionary theory. First, the statement describes evolutionary theory incorrectly. Then it implies that being skeptical of the incorrect definition is the same as being skeptical about biological evolution. This is a classic "straw-man" argument.

What about critical thinking?

Critical thinking is an important component of a good education. Critical thinking about evolution must start with a solid understanding of what evolution is and how contemporary scientists understand it. "Critical thinking" materials recently offered to school boards consist of misinterpretations of scientific research about biological evolution. They confuse an active discussion among scientists over the details of evolution with a disagreement about whether evolution has occurred. This is not critical thinking, but hucksterism.

Written January 8, 2005 by Andrew J. Petto, Ph.D.; Department of Biological Sciences, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee ( https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/ajpetto/www/ )

September 12, 2020

Evolution Education in the U.S. Is Getting Better

The percentage of public school bio teachers who present it as the broad consensus view among scientists—without presenting the creationist “alternative”—has increased markedly since 2007

By Glenn Branch and Ann Reid

A group of scientists prepares to testify for the defense in the 1925 Scopes "monkey trial."

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Woo-hoo , d’oh , or meh ? Which of these Simpsonian reactions is appropriate to the fact, revealed by a 2019 survey conducted by researchers at Penn State University and the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), that about two in three—67 percent—of public high school biology teachers are presenting evolution forthrightly, emphasizing the broad scientific consensus on evolution while not giving any credence to creationism? Only in the context of the long and contentious history of evolution education in the United States is it clear what the most plausible answer is.

American teachers have not always been afforded the luxury of teaching evolution forthrightly. John Thomas Scopes, for example, was famously prosecuted for violating Tennessee’s ban on teaching evolution in 1925. Although his conviction was subsequently overturned, a national survey of high school biology teachers conducted in 1939–1940 revealed that only about half were teaching evolution as a central principle of biology. And bans on teaching evolution remained in place in Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee until 1970.

New obstacles then emerged, particularly requirements to teach various forms of creationism as alternatives to evolution. As recently as 15 years ago, in Dover, Pennsylvania, the local school board attempted to require its high school biology teachers to read a statement to their ninth-grade students describing “Darwin’s theory of evolution” as “not a fact,” and commending “intelligent design”—then a trendy slogan for creationism—to their attention as a scientifically credible alternative. The teachers, to their credit, unanimously refused to comply.

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But their refusal, together with the controversy surrounding the related trial over the constitutionality of the board’s actions, Kitzmiller v. Dover , intrigued two parents a hundred miles to the northwest, in State College, Pa. Michael Berkman and Eric Plutzer were not just any concerned parents, though: they were political scientists at Penn State with a particular interest in education policy. What—they wondered—are high school biology teachers teaching about evolution, and what factors influence their teaching practices?

To satisfy their curiosity, Berkman and Plutzer conducted the first modern national survey of high school biology teachers in 2007. The results were dire. Only a slight majority, 51 percent, reported that they emphasized the broad scientific consensus on evolution while not giving any credence to creationism, as if to suggest no progress in the 67 years since the less rigorous survey of 1939–1940. That’s why the results of the 2019 survey —a collaboration between Plutzer and the NCSE—are so encouraging. 

Between 2007 and 2019, there definitely was progress: from 51 percent of high school biology teachers reporting emphasizing evolution and not creationism in 2007 to 67 percent in 2019. It was matched by a drop from 23 to 12 percent of teachers who offer mixed messages by endorsing both evolution and creationism as a valid scientific alternative to evolution, from 18 to 15 percent of teachers who endorse neither evolution nor creationism, and from 8.6 to 5.6 percent of teachers who endorse creationism while not endorsing evolution.

Credit: National Center for Science Education

What accounts for the improvement? Did intelligent design’s crushing defeat in the Kitzmiller trial make the difference? Probably not. Science teachers are guided not by case law but by state science standards, which specify what students in the state’s public schools are expected to learn. Standards thus influence the content of textbooks, statewide testing, and coursework for pre-service and in-service teachers. Importantly, they also provide a shield for teachers facing misguided community pressure over socially contentious topics like evolution.

The results of the 2019 survey suggest that a concerted effort to improve state science standards helped to improve evolution education. The Next Generation Science Standards

(NGSS) , which debuted in 2013, include “Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity” as a disciplinary core idea of the life sciences at the middle and high school levels. By now, 20 states (plus the District of Columbia) have adopted the NGSS, and a further 24 states have adopted standards based on the same evolution-friendly framework on which the NGSS are based.

Were states that adopted the NGSS especially hospitable to the teaching of evolution? Not really: in 2007, their teachers were less likely to endorse evolution and not creationism than the national average. By 2019, they were more likely. While a variety of explanations are possible, teachers in NGSS states reported having taken more pre-service and in-service coursework in evolution than their colleagues elsewhere, suggesting that the increased expectations impelled both novice and veteran teachers to upgrade their content knowledge of evolution.

Despite the encouraging trend over a mere dozen years, there is still reason for concern: after all, more than one in six high school biology teachers, 17.6 percent, are still presenting creationism as a scientifically credible alternative to evolution. And almost as many high school biology teachers, 15 percent, are still failing to emphasize the broad scientific consensus on evolution, despite its general prevalence in state science standards and despite encouragement from professional organizations. D’oh!

With 13,500-odd local school districts having primary responsibility for curriculum and instruction, changes to science education are inevitably going to be slow, scattered and incremental. Still, with the aid of uncounted scientists, educators, policymakers, administrators and concerned citizens in general (and perhaps even a certain episode of The Simpsons ), clear and convincing improvements for evolution education were demonstrably attained in just a dozen years. It is a victory worth not only celebrating— woo-hoo! —but also enlarging upon.

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• Introduction to Human Evolution

Human evolution

Human evolution is the lengthy process of change by which people originated from apelike ancestors. Scientific evidence shows that the physical and behavioral traits shared by all people originated from apelike ancestors and evolved over a period of approximately six million years.

One of the earliest defining human traits, bipedalism -- the ability to walk on two legs -- evolved over 4 million years ago. Other important human characteristics -- such as a large and complex brain, the ability to make and use tools, and the capacity for language -- developed more recently. Many advanced traits -- including complex symbolic expression, art, and elaborate cultural diversity -- emerged mainly during the past 100,000 years.

Humans are primates. Physical and genetic similarities show that the modern human species, Homo sapiens , has a very close relationship to another group of primate species, the apes. Humans and the great apes (large apes) of Africa -- chimpanzees (including bonobos, or so-called “pygmy chimpanzees”) and gorillas -- share a common ancestor that lived between 8 and 6 million years ago. Humans first evolved in Africa, and much of human evolution occurred on that continent. The fossils of early humans who lived between 6 and 2 million years ago come entirely from Africa.

Most scientists currently recognize some 15 to 20 different species of early humans. Scientists do not all agree, however, about how these species are related or which ones simply died out. Many early human species -- certainly the majority of them – left no living descendants. Scientists also debate over how to identify and classify particular species of early humans, and about what factors influenced the evolution and extinction of each species.

Early humans first migrated out of Africa into Asia probably between 2 million and 1.8 million years ago. They entered Europe somewhat later, between 1.5 million and 1 million years. Species of modern humans populated many parts of the world much later. For instance, people first came to Australia probably within the past 60,000 years and to the Americas within the past 30,000 years or so. The beginnings of agriculture and the rise of the first civilizations occurred within the past 12,000 years.

Paleoanthropology

Paleoanthropology is the scientific study of human evolution. Paleoanthropology is a subfield of anthropology, the study of human culture, society, and biology. The field involves an understanding of the similarities and differences between humans and other species in their genes, body form, physiology, and behavior. Paleoanthropologists search for the roots of human physical traits and behavior. They seek to discover how evolution has shaped the potentials, tendencies, and limitations of all people. For many people, paleoanthropology is an exciting scientific field because it investigates the origin, over millions of years, of the universal and defining traits of our species. However, some people find the concept of human evolution troubling because it can seem not to fit with religious and other traditional beliefs about how people, other living things, and the world came to be. Nevertheless, many people have come to reconcile their beliefs with the scientific evidence.

Early human fossils and archeological remains offer the most important clues about this ancient past. These remains include bones, tools and any other evidence (such as footprints, evidence of hearths, or butchery marks on animal bones) left by earlier people. Usually, the remains were buried and preserved naturally. They are then found either on the surface (exposed by rain, rivers, and wind erosion) or by digging in the ground. By studying fossilized bones, scientists learn about the physical appearance of earlier humans and how it changed. Bone size, shape, and markings left by muscles tell us how those predecessors moved around, held tools, and how the size of their brains changed over a long time. Archeological evidence refers to the things earlier people made and the places where scientists find them. By studying this type of evidence, archeologists can understand how early humans made and used tools and lived in their environments.

The process of evolution

The process of evolution involves a series of natural changes that cause species (populations of different organisms) to arise, adapt to the environment, and become extinct. All species or organisms have originated through the process of biological evolution. In animals that reproduce sexually, including humans, the term species refers to a group whose adult members regularly interbreed, resulting in fertile offspring -- that is, offspring themselves capable of reproducing. Scientists classify each species with a unique, two-part scientific name. In this system, modern humans are classified as Homo sapiens .

Evolution occurs when there is change in the genetic material -- the chemical molecule, DNA -- which is inherited from the parents, and especially in the proportions of different genes in a population. Genes represent the segments of DNA that provide the chemical code for producing proteins. Information contained in the DNA can change by a process known as mutation. The way particular genes are expressed – that is, how they influence the body or behavior of an organism -- can also change. Genes affect how the body and behavior of an organism develop during its life, and this is why genetically inherited characteristics can influence the likelihood of an organism’s survival and reproduction.

Evolution does not change any single individual. Instead, it changes the inherited means of growth and development that typify a population (a group of individuals of the same species living in a particular habitat). Parents pass adaptive genetic changes to their offspring, and ultimately these changes become common throughout a population. As a result, the offspring inherit those genetic characteristics that enhance their chances of survival and ability to give birth, which may work well until the environment changes. Over time, genetic change can alter a species' overall way of life, such as what it eats, how it grows, and where it can live. Human evolution took place as new genetic variations in early ancestor populations favored new abilities to adapt to environmental change and so altered the human way of life.

Dr. Rick Potts provides a video short introduction to some of the evidence for human evolution, in the form of fossils and artifacts.

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I Was Never Taught Where Humans Came From

Many American students, myself included, never learn the human part of evolution.

Here’s what I remember from biology class at my public high school in Texas: We learned everything there is to know about the Krebs cycle. We collected bugs in the heat and suffocated them in jars of nail-polish remover. We did not, to my recollection, learn much of anything about how the human species originated.

Most scientists believe that the beings that would become humans branched off from the common ancestor we share with chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, about 6 million years ago. We did not learn this part—the monkey part. That is, our shared ancestry with other primates. Because this was nearly 20 years ago, and memories tend to fade with time, I checked with several friends who went to the same high school at the same time. None of them recalled learning anything about human evolution, either.

The only high-school biology class I took was in ninth grade, and it was apparently so uninteresting to me that I don’t remember my teacher’s name. (My former school district did not return a request for comment.) My teachers were for the most part religious, though they appeared to stay firmly within the bounds of the state-mandated curriculum. In another class, my teacher showed us diagrams of the human eye, then snuck in a remark that the complexity of the eye is convincing evidence that there is a Creator.

I didn’t have many other opportunities to learn about humanity’s origin. The pastors at the evangelical youth group I attended—outside of school—told me it’s possible that dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth at the same time. We can’t know for sure, they said, because carbon dating is not to be trusted.

My experience was far from unusual. While only 13 percent of teachers said they advocate creationism or intelligent design in the classroom, based on a survey of 926 public-high-school biology teachers done in 2007, the most recent data available, the majority do not explicitly advocate either creationism or evolutionary biology. This “cautious 60 percent,” write the Penn State political scientists Michael Berkman and Eric Plutzer in their 2011 article on the topic, “are neither strong advocates for evolutionary biology nor explicit endorsers of nonscientific alternatives.” (Plutzer is in the process of conducting a new survey now; he told me preliminary data suggest little has changed since 2007). And there are recent examples of school administrators doubting the value of teaching evolution. In Arizona last year, three of the candidates vying for state school superintendent wanted students to be taught intelligent design, the Arizona Daily Sun reported . In 2017, a Utah school-board member nicely summed up the concept of “teaching the controversy” when she suggested “maybe just teaching theory and letting both sides of the argument come out—whether it’s intelligent design or the Darwin origin.” Except that people who study evolution also tend to believe there is no scientific controversy.

Some educators in this ambivalent 60 percent tend to teach evolution only as it applies to molecular biology, Plutzer said, but not the macroevolution of species. (This seems like what happened to me.) Others distance themselves from the material even as they tell students it will be on a standardized test. “Their primary concern is not offending the students or their parents by characterizing the science in a way that seems to be challenging religious faith,” Plutzer told me. “I think that in some cases, the teachers themselves have doubts.”

Additionally, some teachers expose students to different “theories” about evolution and encourage them to make up their own minds. “But does a 15-year-old student really have enough information to reject thousands of peer reviewed scientific papers?” Berkman and Plutzer write in their article.

Some of these teachers might even introduce evolutionary ideas such as natural selection and microevolution. But they skip the part we skipped—the monkey part. The reason is perhaps unsurprising: Creationists “are not invested in whether evolution affects the sizes and shapes of the beaks of finches in the Galápagos,” says Glenn Branch, the deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, which supports teaching evolution in schools. “They are worried about whether people were created in the image of God himself.”

The reason public-classroom instruction varies so much, Branch says, is that teachers have many opportunities to personalize what they teach to students. State standards differ, and local school boards develop curricula that are designed to meet those differing standards. Teachers take those curricula and develop lesson plans. Then they go off into their classrooms. Do they teach exactly what’s in the lesson plan or tweak it? It’s hard to know for sure.

If teachers are aligned with the values of the community, parents might not complain about what students are learning, Branch says. If parents do complain—because, say, they believe that the teacher has improperly brought up religion in the classroom—the principal might force the teacher to change his or her ways. If the principal backs up the teacher, it might become fodder for a lawsuit.

The courts have so far been on the side of the secular. Creationism has lost every major U.S. federal court case in the past 40 years, Berkman and Plutzer write. And not even the best-known opponents of evolution overtly come out against it. Take the Discovery Institute, which describes itself as an “educational and research organization” with “more than 40 affiliated scientists and scholars, many of whom think key features of life and the universe reflect evidence of intelligent design rather than an unguided process.” Its vice president, John West, told me via email that the best approach to teaching human evolution in public high schools is to “give students an accurate understanding of the current science, which includes exploring unresolved issues and areas where scientists continue to disagree.” These include, he said, “debates about how humans’ unique capacities for language, math, ethics, fire-making, and art developed in the history of life.” Sarah Chaffee, the institute’s program officer for education and public policy, told me, “The Next Generation Science Standards inform most states’ science standards. These standards mention many aspects of evolution, but they do not specifically reference human evolution.” If teachers aren’t teaching human evolution, she said, “it is very likely the main reason is solely the fact that it is not in the science standards.” (Branch says while it’s true that human evolution is not in the NGSS, other factors also might explain why teachers don’t present it.)

How does this variation in evolution education affect students? Plutzer suggested that “teaching the controversy” opens the door to the idea that matters of science are up to students to decide for themselves. “The broader consequence is that students will come away with the idea that important elements of science are based in values and not evidence, and that gives them license to reject other kinds of science,” he said.

Branch says lacking a knowledge of human evolution might make it harder for, say, doctors to understand superbugs, or for farmers to understand the nuances of agriculture. I’m a little skeptical of that argument. There are great doctors in Texas, and certainly plenty of great farmers too. The internet wasn’t as ubiquitous when I was in high school, but it was still possible to read and explore on one’s own. Today, that’s even easier.

Instead, the real problem with not learning about human evolution in high school might be the simple frustration of not knowing what other people know, when they know it. Public school is supposed to provide Americans with an even foundation on which to build our reality. Among other things, its purpose is to show us how we got to where we are today. For many students, the origins of that story remain opaque.

Teaching Evolution Isn’t About Changing Beliefs

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Creationists are right—in some cases. They are not right that the world is only 6,000 years old, nor that our species descended from two innocent ancestors in an Iraqi garden. They are not right when they suggest that studying evolution force-feeds an anti-Christian religion down their kids’ throats. But creationists are right when they contend—as they have for more than a century now—that their kids should not be subjected to hostile religious indoctrination in public schools.

Those of us who want to promote more and better evolution education might worry that this sort of admission will help creationists maintain their political stranglehold on comprehensive science education in schools. But it won’t. Teaching students evolutionary theory is not in and of itself religious indoctrination.

Federal courts have endorsed the notion that evolution is not a religion time and time again. In the 1982 case McLean v. Arkansas , for instance, Judge William Overton of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas declared, "[I]t is clearly established in the case law, and perhaps also in common sense, that evolution is not a religion .” Indeed, the notion that evolution is a religion defies common sense. How could a religion have no beliefs about the supernatural? No rituals? No moral commandments?

The fact that evolution is not a religion, however, does not mean that it does not have religious implications for followers of some religions. As the atheist mathematician Jason Rosenhouse of James Madison University explained after spending time with creationists, “Evolution forces a profound rethinking of traditional faith.” So it is understandable that creationists are cautious about a subject that may have religious implications for them.

Creationists are right to complain when their children are forced to believe something that violates their religious creeds. Public school teachers should never push children toward or away from any particular religious belief. Those who have a religious belief have the right to decide if something has religious implications. For example, to many people a ham and cheese is just a sandwich. But it is also clear that this particular sandwich has religious implications for lots of people. Should children be forced to eat a ham and cheese if it violates their religious beliefs? Of course not. And, crucially, it is the religious believers themselves who should decide if something has religious implications, whether it be a science or a sandwich.

Students who don't want to believe evolution can and do still learn about it.

But students can learn subject matter that might conflict with their religion without compromising their beliefs. Evolutionary theory is a building block of our understanding of life. As the best existing scientific explanation of the way our species came to be, how evolution works is vital for all students to understand. Students should not have the right to opt out of learning about a central tenet of contemporary science. But if students have religious objections to the theory’s implications, the public school has no right to insist that they believe it—that is, to regard evolutionary theory as true.

Students do not need to believe that humans evolved from other species. It is enough for students to understand why scientists support that theory and the evidence on which scientists base that belief. Students do not need to say, “Natural selection is one of the most important ways species came to be differentiated.” It is enough for them to say, “Most scientists think natural selection is one of the best explanations.”

There is already evidence that such teaching can work. Researchers in Arizona discovered that high school students could improve their understanding of evolution without changing their beliefs about it. Ronald S. Hermann of Towson University, in Maryland, argues that this “cognitive apartheid"—separating that which is believed from that which is not believed—happens all the time in science classes. Students who don’t want to believe evolution can and do still learn about it. At the university level, too, David E. Long of Morehead State, in Kentucky, found that students in undergraduate biology programs can understand evolution and the evidence for it while not compromising what they believe to be true about creation.

In the end, creationists are right—sort of. They are not right when they try to water down science curricula by teaching intelligent design. They are not right when they try to reduce the amount of real evolutionary science taught in public schools. They are right, however, to protest if public schools impose religious beliefs on their children. By teaching comprehensive science curricula that includes evolution and teaching students to confront subjects they may not agree with, schools are not trying to change beliefs. Understanding is enough.

A version of this article appeared in the April 20, 2016 edition of Education Week as Teaching Evolution Is Not About Changing Beliefs

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Teaching Evolution In Public Schools Argumentative Essay

Type of paper: Argumentative Essay

Topic: Students , Evolution , World , Theory , Science , Religion , Teaching , Education

Words: 1600

Published: 12/18/2019

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Over recent years, there has been much debate as to whether evolution rather than, or in addition to, creationism should be taught in public schools. There are many groups and individuals on both side of the argument. Interestingly, some scientists are in favour of the teaching of creationism, though the vast majority are not. Although it is generally agreed that there is no scientific fact to support the notion of creationism, many believe that it should be taught to students as an alternative viewpoint. However, evolution is scientifically proven and therefore all children in public schools should be taught about it. Contention between science and religion dates much further back than Charles Darwin’s publication of Origin of the Species. There was an early conflict that has since become famous; this was the 1633 ‘Trial of Galileo’. It was in this year that Dialogue was published. Dialogue was a book that backed up the Copernican theory claiming that the earth revolved around the sun. This was hugely controversial as the Bible suggests the opposite, that the sun revolves around the earth (Evolution). Since their beginning, humans have strived to learn and to understand how life originated. As this subject concerns happenings of the past, there is a high level of speculation involved. Furthermore, the question of how life began is an issue that is deeply emotional as it is directly linked to individual personal beliefs and values. In the late 1800s, evolution started to become accepted among professors of science. However, in spite of this, people still opposed it being taught as part of the curriculum in public schools. Even today, evolution is not taught in all American public schools (Teaching, 1999). It was not until the 1930s that evolution began to properly emerge into the education system. These days, evolutionary naturalism is the most common perspective of origins taught in the West, and over the course of the last fifty years, evolutionists have been adamantly opposed to the teaching of different theories in public schools (Teaching, 1999). There are various important arguments for teaching evolution rather than creationism in public schools. British scientists claim that pupils must be taught unequivocally that science support the theory of evolution (Creationism, 2006). Five years ago, the Royal Society further support this view. The society’s 2006 statement said that pupils may want to "explore the compatibility, or otherwise, of science with various beliefs, and they should be encouraged to do so” (Creationism, 2006). Creationism upholds the theory that the whole world, and everything in it, was created in seven days. Referring to this notion, the Royal Society added: “A belief that all species on Earth have always existed in their present form is not consistent with the wealth of evidence for evolution, such as the fossil record. Similarly, a belief that the Earth was formed in 4004BC is not consistent with the evidence from geology, astronomy and physics that the solar system, including Earth, formed about 4,600 million years ago” (Creationism, 1999). However, in 2008, The Royal Society released a statement in which they were emerging as upholders of the opposite view. In this statement, they claimed that creationism should, in fact, be taught as a legitimate perspective (Smith & Frean, 2008). The Reverend Michael Reiss who was the Royal Society’s director of education, claimed that it was “self-defeating to dismiss as wrong or misguided the 10 per cent of pupils who believed in the literal account of God creating the Universe and all living things as related in the Bible or Koran” (Smith & Frean, 2008). The Reverend went on to say that creationism should be treated as a world view when being taught to students in science lessons. Professor Reiss’ remarks caused disputes between him and fellow scientists and also with the British Government. It is worth noting Charles Darwin was a former fellow of the Royal Society; this highlights the turnaround that the Society has undergone. The British national curriculum guidelines affirm that creationism is totally irrelevant to school science lessons. If creationism is raised for discussion by a student, the guidelines stipulate that the teacher should comment on how the view differs from evolution, tell the student that creationism is not a scientific theory and therefore religious class is a more appropriate place for the conversation (Smith & Frean, 2008). Some claim that teaching creationism is one example of inclusive learning, and that this is a valuable reason for including it in science lessons. For example, a Spokesman for the Royal Society said “Teachers need to be in a position to be able to discuss science theories and explain why evolution is a sound scientific theory and why creationism isn’t” (Smith & Frean, 2008). The idea seems to be that teachers should try to be sensitive to students who believe in creationism, and while teachers should explain that creationism is not accepted by scientists, they should avoid demeaning the children’s creationist beliefs. However, it is arguable that the Government’s guidelines cover this eventuality by asking the teachers to teach science in science lessons, leaving matters of religion and faith to Religious Studies lessons. A significant problem with creationism and the ideas that it represents is that it contradicts many scientifically proven facts in different academic fields. Creationists criticise evolution, but they additionally condemn all scientific concepts that propose a universe dating back further than 6,000 to 10,000 years. Examples of this are cosmology, geology, astronomy and relativity (Welcome). Creationism appears to uphold the view that evolution isn’t scientifically satisfactory. However, despite the term ‘theory of evolution,’ the notion that the world evolved over a long period of time is a proven scientific fact. The theory part of evolution refers to how the transformation actually occurred, which is still largely unproven and is still debated among scientists. There is a vast amount of fossil evidence that adequately validates the fact of evolution. However, there is evidence even more convincing today and that stems from species DNA testing. An example of this is the fact that humans and chimpanzees have over ninety-eight per cent identical genes. This proves how closely related the two species are. It is generally agreed that in the future, most of our new learning of the process of evolution will be provided by DNA information (Evolution). Importantly, evolution is not deemed as conflicting with religious views of most Christians or Jews. The majority of mainstream Protestant values, the Catholic Church, and numerous other religious doctrines accept evolution as a fact. There are disagreements concerning evolution, just as there are concerning most theories. For example, most biologists hold the opinion that evolution has had periods of unevenness throughout the course of history. However, some biologists disagree, believing that the rate of evolution has been, and still is, constant (Evolution). After more than two hundred years, the Catholic Church finally recognised the scientific proof that the earth revolved around the sun. In the same way, it is probable that most Fundamentalists will also eventually accept the theory of evolution. It is difficult to say whether this will happen in the next fifty years or in the next five hundred years, but it will happen. The debate over whether or not evolution should be taught in public schools is a fascinating one with many depths within it. The ideas of inclusive learning and of introducing more cultural diversity into schools are both forward thinking and positive. However, these ideas refer to matters such as allowing students the time and setting to follow their religious and cultural beliefs, and introducing into classes literary texts by authors of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds; these are, of course, just two examples within a much wider scope. Nevertheless, these movements do not suggest that children should not be taught the truth about the world and the scientific discoveries that have been made. Evolution should be taught in public schools as it is based on scientific fact. Creationism should continue to be acknowledged and discussed within the context of a Religious Studies class, but certainly not within the Sciences.

Creationism (2006). ‘No Place in Schools.’ BBC News. Retrieved from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4896652.stm Evolution Controversy. Exploring Constitutional Conflicts. Retrieved from

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/evolution.htm Garner, R. (2007). Creationism Should be Tacked in Science Lessons, Schools Told. The Independent. Retrieved from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/creationism-should- be-tackled-in-science-lessons-schools-told-396111.html Judge Rules Against ‘Intelligent Design.’ MSNBC. Retrieved from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10545387/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/judge- rules-against-intelligent-design/ Randerson, J. (2006). Revealed: Rise of Creationism in UK Schools. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2006/nov/27/controversiesinscience.religion Smith, L & Frean, A. (2008). Leading scientist urges teaching of creationism in schools. The Times. Retrieved from http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article4734767.ece?token=null&offset =0&page=1 Teaching Creation and Evolution in Schools. (1999). Technical Journal. Retrieved from http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v13/i2/teaching.asp Welcome to Creationism. Creationism. Retrieved from http://www.creationism.co.uk/

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THE EVOLUTION OF TEACHING

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L. Fogarty, P. Strimling, K. N. Laland, THE EVOLUTION OF TEACHING, Evolution , Volume 65, Issue 10, 1 October 2011, Pages 2760–2770, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1558-5646.2011.01370.x

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Teaching, alongside imitation, is widely thought to underlie the success of humanity by allowing high‐fidelity transmission of information, skills, and technology between individuals, facilitating both cumulative knowledge gain and normative culture. Yet, it remains a mystery why teaching should be widespread in human societies but extremely rare in other animals. We explore the evolution of teaching using simple genetic models in which a single tutor transmits adaptive information to a related pupil at a cost. Teaching is expected to evolve where its costs are outweighed by the inclusive fitness benefits that result from the tutor's relatives being more likely to acquire the valuable information. We find that teaching is not favored where the pupil can easily acquire the information on its own, or through copying others, or for difficult to learn traits, where teachers typically do not possess the information to pass on to relatives. This leads to a narrow range of traits for which teaching would be efficacious, which helps to explain the rarity of teaching in nature, its unusual distribution, and its highly specific nature. Further models that allow for cumulative cultural knowledge gain suggest that teaching evolved in humans because cumulative culture renders otherwise difficult‐to‐acquire valuable information available to teach.

The demographic and ecological success of humanity is widely attributed to our capacity for the high‐fidelity information transmission necessary for cumulative culture ( Boyd and Richerson 1985 ; Tomasello 1994 ). Alongside imitation, teaching is the primary mechanism through which humans pass acquired knowledge, skills, and technology between individuals and between generations. Teaching is widespread in human societies, and is a key human psychological adaptation, vital for normative forms of human cooperation to be tenable ( Boyd and Richerson 1985 ; Tomasello 1994 ; Fehr and Fischbacher 2003 ; Csibra and Gergely 2006 ; Csibra 2007 ), and central to technological development ( Boyd and Richerson 1985 ). Yet if teaching is so effective, it remains a mystery why it should be either absent or exceedingly rare in virtually all other animals.

Countless animals acquire skills and information from others ( Heyes and Galef 1996 ; Laland and Galef 2009 ), however experienced individuals are not generally thought to actively facilitate learning in others ( Danchin et al. 2004 ). Caro and Hauser (1992) proposed a functional definition of “teaching” applicable to animals, in which a tutor is said to teach if it modifies its behavior in the presence of a pupil, at some cost, thereby promoting the pupil's learning. Refinements of this definition impose additional criteria, such as feedback from pupil to tutor, or restrict teaching to the transfer of skills, concepts, and rules ( Franks and Richerson 2006 ; Leadbeater et al. 2006 ; Hoppitt et al. 2008 ). Deploying such definitions, researchers report putative cases of costly information donation (henceforth “animal teaching”) in diverse species, including ants, bees, pied babblers, meerkats, and cats ( Franks and Richerson 2006 ; Leadbeater et al. 2006 ; Thornton and McAuliffe 2006 ; Raihani and Ridley 2008 ; Rapaport and Brown 2008 see Hoppitt et al. 2008 ; Rapaport and Brown 2008 for reviews). Although cases of animal teaching remain controversial, and their consanguinity with human teaching is contested ( Leadbeater et al. 2006 ; Csibra 2007 ; Premack 2007 ), these observations nonetheless raise a challenging question: why should the costly donation of information exhibit such a curious taxonomic distribution?

Any functional similarities should not obscure the fact that mechanistically, cases of animal teaching are entirely different from human teaching, and are not reliant on homologous characters ( Csibra and Gergely 2006 ; Hoppitt et al. 2008 ). Indeed, current thinking suggests that instances of animal teaching function to enhance the fidelity of information transmission through adaptive refinements of forms of learning present in the animal, leading to distinct teaching mechanisms in different species ( Hoppitt et al. 2008 ). Nonetheless, it is germane to ask why convergent selection should favor investment in costly mechanisms of information transfer in some species and not others. The fact that functionally similar behavior is reported in diverse animals, leads us to ask “What do these species have in common that led to the evolution of teaching?”“Why is teaching not more widespread in animals?” and “Why is it that intelligent animals such as chimpanzees seemingly do not teach if ants and bees are capable of doing so?” As animal teaching appears restricted to isolated traits, this raises the further question of “How did a very general capability for teaching evolve in the human lineage?”

These questions are of widespread interest to multiple academic disciplines, including evolutionary and behavioral biology, psychology, anthropology, archaeology, economics and education. Yet although there has been extensive research into related topics, such as the evolution of social learning ( Cavalli‐Sforza and Feldman 1981 ; Boyd and Richerson 1985 ; Feldman and Zhivotovsky 1992 ; Rendell et al. 2010 ), learned communication ( Kirby, Dowman and Griffiths 2007 ; Kirby, Cornish and Smith 2008 ; Boyd, Gintis and Bowles 2010 ), and learned cooperation ( Boyd and Richerson 1985 ; Peck and Feldman 1986 ; Boyd et al. 2003 ; Fehr and Fischbacher 2003 ; Gintis 2003 ), currently there is no formal theory of the evolution of teaching.

Although most teaching meets current definitions of cooperation ( West et al. 2007 ), it being favored in the tutor because it promotes the acquisition of fitness‐enhancing information in the pupil, certain unique features specific to teaching render a specialized treatment necessary. These include the fact that taught information can be acquired through means other than teaching (e.g., through trial‐and‐error learning or inadvertent social learning), and that the dynamics of information transfer differ considerably from the dynamics of the spread and accumulation of physical resources. These differences mean that the evolution of teaching is not explained by contemporary theory of the evolution of cooperation ( Sachs et al. 2004 ; Lehmann and Keller 2006 ; West et al. 2007 ). We elaborate on these points, and more generally on the relationship between teaching and cooperation, in the discussion.

Here we develop simple and accessible mathematical models that explore under what circumstances teaching might be expected to evolve. Our analyses help to explain the observed distribution of teaching behavior, the absence of teaching in other taxa and the widespread use of teaching in humans.

Here we describe a model with haploid genetics, but in the electronic supplementary material (ESM) we extend the analysis to diploid and haplodiploid cases, which give qualitatively similar results. We assume a single, infinite‐sized, well‐mixed population with two genotypes, teacher and nonteacher . This assumption corresponds to our adopting the phenotypic gambit ( Grafen 1984 ), and in reality we envisage that teaching behavior is likely to result from many genes as well as experiential factors. Individual fitness is a function of baseline fitness ( w 0 ), costs associated with genotype ( c t , c c ), and a viability benefit ( w i , where w i >1) associated with possessing valuable learned information i . Teaching is costly, with c c representing a fixed cognitive cost paid by teachers (e.g., representing the neural hardware necessary to teach) and c t representing a time (or energy) cost paid when teaching. As the cognitive cost of teaching is a cost paid by all teachers, independent of their individual fitness, the most appropriate formulation is one in which this cost c c is additive. Conversely, the time cost, c t , is dependent on possession of the information, so it is more realistic to view this as multiplicative. Thus, teachers with and without the information have fitness w t = w 0 w i c t – c c and w t = w 0 – c c , respectively.

Individuals can acquire the information asocially, with probability A , for instance, through trial‐and‐error learning. However each individual also has a cultural role model, or tutor, from whom they can learn the information, and to whom they are related with relatedness r . Consistent with Grafen's statistical definition ( Hamilton 1964 , Grafen 1985 ), we treat relatedness as a “measure of the genetical similarity between social partners, relative to the rest of the population” ( West et al. 2011 ). From this role model, the individual can acquire the information through inadvertent social learning (e.g., imitation, emulation, enhancement effects), with probability S , or teaching (provided their cultural role model is a teacher), with probability T , where T > S and T > A . We assume that pupil and cultural role model combinations form with a probability proportional to their genetic similarity ( r ). This assumption is consistent with any one of three biologically plausible processes: (1) “active choice by pupils,” who adopt cultural role models with a likelihood that increases with relatedness, (2) “active choice by cultural role models,” who adopt pupils with a likelihood that increases with relatedness, or (3) “spatial structure or population viscosity,” leading to related individuals being more likely to assort, and thereby generating pupil–cultural role model pairings, with high compared to low relatedness. Thus although this assortment could result from kin discrimination or a green‐beard mechanism ( West et al. 2007 ), it need not do so. We also assume that each genotype assorts with relatives to a similar degree. This assumption is made for mathematical convenience and, while it is a defensible first approximation, it may not be met in some natural populations. However, as we envisage that there are likely to be greater fitness benefits for assortment among teachers than nonteachers, this is likely to translate into our generating conservative estimates of the likelihood of the evolution of teaching. In the terminology of Gardner and West (2006) , our treatment of relatedness is more akin to the “open” models of social evolution developed by Frank (1998) , than to the explicit “closed” models derived by Taylor (1992) , which incorporate levels of dispersal and other demographic assumptions that impact on assortment according to kinship. We designate the frequency of teachers and nonteachers to be t and nt ( t + nt = 1), the proportion of teachers and nonteachers possessing the information as i t and i nt , and the proportion of teachers and nonteachers that do not possess the information as ni t and ni nt ( i nt + ni nt = 1, i t + ni t = 1), respectively.

INVASION ANALYSIS

For all following analyses, we set the baseline fitness, w 0 = 1.

THE RELATEDNESS OF TUTOR AND PUPIL

By inspection of equation (5) we find that teaching will evolve where its costs are outweighed by the inclusive fitness benefits that result from the tutor's relatives being more likely to acquire the valuable information. This effect echoes both recent and traditional formulations of inclusive fitness models first proposed by Hamilton (1964) . The impact of relatedness in this model follows more closely the inclusive fitness formulation described by Hamilton (1964) and examined by Taylor et al. (2007) , concentrating on the fitness effects of an individual's behavior on kin and the population as a whole. The benefit to possessing the teacher genotype comes from an increased chance that the individual's cultural role model will also be a teacher, which leads to a greater probability of acquiring the information. As might be expected, the benefits of teaching are sensitive to the relatedness of tutor and pupil. Any fitness advantage to teaching depends critically on teachers having a higher than average probability of learning from their cultural role model. The change in fitness associated with r when teachers invade is ri nt ( T – S )( w i c t – 1) and when nonteachers invade is – ri t ( T – S )( w i – 1). The more related an average individual is to its role model the greater the benefit of teaching ( Fig. 1A ), a finding consistent with both existing kin selection theory and recent verbal arguments concerning the evolution of teaching ( Hoppitt et al. 2008 ; Thornton and Raihani 2008 ).

(A) Fitness difference between teachers and nonteachers ( w d ), plotted against the average degree of relatedness between an individual and its cultural role model, for different values of c t . Above the dashed horizontal line teachers are more fit than nonteachers and can invade. T = 0.9, c c = 0.001, w i = 2, S = 0.5, A = 0.1, w 0 = 1. ( B ) w d plotted against the probability of learning through means other than teaching, for three values of w i . T = 0.9, r = 0.5, c t = 0.915, c c = 0.01, w 0 = 1. ( C ) w d plotted against teaching efficacy, T , for a cumulative and a noncumulative model. A 1 = A 2 = S 1 = S 2 = 0.05, c c = 0.0001, w 1 = 2, w 2 = 6, r = 0.5, w 0 = 1, c t = 0.99. Note the difference in scale of effects on the y ‐axes of the three plots.

THE EFFECTS OF ASOCIAL AND INADVERTENT SOCIAL LEARNING

The effects of asocial and inadvertent social learning ( A and S ) on equation (5) are similar and we will deal with them together. Of particular significance is our finding of n ‐shaped functions representing how the utility of teaching is affected by other means of acquiring the information ( Fig. 1B ). Effective asocial or social learning, represented by high values of A or S relative to T , reduces the benefits of teaching, rendering it uneconomical. As asocial learning and inadvertent social learning are less costly than teaching, nonteachers have a fitness advantage over teachers when the information is easy to acquire. These observations explain why the incidence of teaching does not appear to covary with brain size or intelligence in animals. Teaching will not be favored where the pupil can easily acquire the information on its own, or through copying others ( Hoppitt et al. 2008 ; Thornton and Raihani 2008 ). This is apparent in primates such as chimpanzees, which are very efficient learners and thought to be particularly adept at social learning and imitation ( Whiten et al. 2003 ; Whiten 2005 ). Paradoxically, our models establish that teaching is not generally favored for difficult to learn traits either (low A and S ), as teachers typically do not possess the information to pass on to their relatives. Accordingly, teaching is most likely to be favored by mid‐range A and S values, with the breadth of the window within which teaching invades dependent on the fitness benefits of the information ( w i ). However, unless w i is very high, there will typically be an extremely narrow range of traits for which teaching would be efficacious, which helps to explain both the rarity of teaching in nature and the highly specific nature of animal teaching. For example, meerkat helpers teach pups to process scorpions and other food items, but not what to eat, or any nonforaging behavior ( Thornton and McAuliffe 2006 ). Similarly ants, social bees, and babblers also teach a single highly specific piece of information ( Franks and Richardson 2006 ; Leadbeater et al. 2006 ; Hoppitt et al. 2008 ; Raihani and Ridley 2008 ).

When considering the invasion of teachers into a population of nonteachers A and S have two conflicting effects. First, increasing both A and S relative to T reduces the value of teaching by increasing the probability of learning by other means. Because asocial learning and inadvertent social learning are less costly than teaching, nonteachers have a fitness advantage over teachers when the information is easy to acquire. Intuitively, as the gap between S and T closes the benefits to teaching diminish. High values of A and S , corresponding to cases in which the information is easy to acquire through other means (i.e., without teaching), thus do not favor teaching.

Second, the indirect effect of increasing A and S is to increase the amount of information in the population, which increases the benefit of being a teacher over that of being a nonteacher (see next). Conversely, very low values of A and S do not favor teaching, because teachers typically do not possess the information to pass on to their relatives. Teaching is most likely to be favored by mid‐range A and S values, whereas very easy and very difficult to learn traits do not promote teaching (see Fig. 1B ).

The effect of asocial learning ( A ) also depends on the relative values of social learning ( S) and teaching efficacy ( T) . As the gap between S and T closes, an increase in A favors nonteachers. In other words, under these circumstances the advantage for a teacher diminishes. This occurs because nonteachers can pass the information on at no cost. One ramification of these observations is that there is little incentive for otherwise effective learners to teach. This is discussed by Whiten (1999) in relation to the great apes who are extremely effective learners but appear to display little or no teaching behavior.

THE VALUE OF INFORMATION

Any benefit to being a teacher comes from an increased chance that the individual's cultural role model will also be a teacher, which leads to a greater probability of acquiring the information. It follows that this benefit increases with the proportion of individuals in the population possessing the information. To be explicit P ( l|t ) – P ( l|nt ) = r ( Ti t – Si nt ), thus if both i t and i nt are increased by ɛ, the difference in probability of learning as a teacher and nonteacher, P ( l|t ) – P ( l|nt ), is increased by ɛr ( T – S ), which is positive. However, as the information in the population increases, the fitness of both genotypes increases because, T > S , teachers bring more information into the population than nonteachers. This leads to the counter‐intuitive result that the fitness of nonteachers W nt can increase when the cost of teaching is decreased.

CUMULATIVE CULTURE MODEL

Compared to animal teaching, human teaching is a very general capability, reliant on high‐fidelity mechanisms such as speech, instruction, and direct shaping, and it allows the transmission of complex information that could not be devised by a single individual ( Hoppitt et al. 2008 ). Humans have undergone cumulative cultural evolution, which has in essence reduced our reliance on information acquired asocially, and allowed the transfer of knowledge and skills that would be difficult to learn without direct guidance and instruction. Valuable information, concerning for instance industrial practices or technological manufacture, has become available to teach through the accumulated efforts of many individuals.

We set out to explore whether teaching and cumulative culture might have coevolved, extending our model to allow for cumulative knowledge gain by allowing individuals that have acquired the information to gather further knowledge that improves it, simultaneously making the information more fitness enhancing but more difficult to learn. We assume two pieces of information (1 and 2), the latter refining the former, where individuals with both pieces of information gain fitness increment w 1 w 2 with w 2 > 1. We can consider the evolution of teaching in humans by exploring how cumulative learning affects the sensitivity of the invasion conditions to the fidelity of teaching, T , and the value of the information w i . We include a second round of learning where the pupils who learnt in the first round get a chance to learn the second trait from a new cultural parent. We then rebuild the model using equations (1a) and (1b).

Using these, we can analyze the difference in fitness between teachers and nonteachers in a population of mostly nonteachers in three different conditions: a cumulative culture where the second trait is a refinement of the first (i.e., 1 <w 2 ), a noncumulative culture (1 = w 2 ), and the original model with no second trait. The presence of a second trait that does not refine the first is similar to having two independent traits that give the same fitness benefit, which can be picked up in sequence.

Using numerical analysis of these three conditions we find that the fitness advantage of teachers over nonteachers is greater in a cumulative culture context than a noncumulative context, and that this fitness difference increases with the fidelity of teaching (as T increases, see Fig. 1C ). Writing W dc for the fitness difference between teachers and nonteachers in the cumulative setting, and retaining W d for the noncumulative setting, Figure 2 shows that W dc – W d is positive across most biologically plausible conditions. This means that the relative fitness of the teaching compared to the nonteaching genotype is always the same or higher in a cumulative setting compared to a noncumulative setting, and this conclusion holds across an extremely wide range of parameter values. Furthermore, numerical analysis has established that, for biologically plausible values of the relevant parameters ( T , A , S , w i , c t ), the equilibrium frequency of information in the population prior to the invasion of teaching is always higher in a cumulative setting than in a noncumulative one (see Fig. 2D ). Naturally, additional cumulative learning episodes would further increase W dc – W d . Conversely, a second learning opportunity when w 1 ≥ w 1   w 2 does not increase a teacher's fitness. Thus the difference between the cumulative and noncumulative model is not explained by the fact that there are two learning opportunities in the cumulative setting.

The fitness advantage of teaching over nonteaching is greater in a cumulative compared to a noncumulative setting (i.e. W dc – W d > 0), across a broad range of parameter space. Contour plots show W dc – W d , with teaching efficacy, T (0.5< T <1) plotted against (A) the relative ease of learning information 2 compared to information 1 (henceforth β, where A 1 =βA 2 and S 1 =βS 2 . As β approaches 1, information 2 becomes as easy to learn as information 1, through asocial and inadvertent social learning), (B) the time cost of teaching, c t , and ( c ) the fitness value of information 2, w 2 . ( d ) The equilibrium frequency of information 1 is higher in a cumulative than a noncumulative setting. In all plots A 1 = A 2 = S 1 = S 2 = 0.05, c c = 0.0001, w 1 = 1.5, w 2 = 6, r = 1/2, w 0 = 1, c t = 0.99 except where otherwise stated.

Figure 1C illustrates how cumulative knowledge gain increases the difference in fitness between teachers and nonteachers, broadening the range of conditions under which teaching evolves, and Figure 2 reveals that this pattern is robust across all biologically plausible parameter space. The fitness advantage of teaching over nonteaching increases with the fidelity of teaching ( T ), and does so more sharply in a cumulative compared with a noncumulative setting.

DATA COLLECTION FOR MODEL TESTING.

We envisage that it may be possible for researchers to collect data with which to parameterize and test the predictions of our models. The generation of values for the efficacy of asocial and inadvertent social learning ( A and S ) parameters is relatively straightforward and useful values have already been generated by Thornton and McAuliffe (2006) regarding meerkats (although not in sufficiently high numbers to allow their use here). Patterns of relatedness ( r ) for tutors and pupils could feasibly be extracted from patterns of social interaction, using Grafen's (1985) statistical approach. To generate a relative likelihood of the invasion of teaching between two species, a reasonable approximation would be to assume that the parameters describing the absolute worth of the information ( w i ) and the baseline fitness value ( w 0 ) were equal across species. Because in most cases it is possible to set the cognitive cost of teaching to be zero ( c c = 0), the only remaining parameters relate to the value of the time cost to each individual teacher, c t. In cases in which teaching has been observed, for example meerkats, we envisage these data may readily be estimated. In cases in which teaching has not been previously seen, different values of c t within a sensible range could be used to compare the likelihood of teaching under different circumstances. Accordingly, the above analyses provide opportunities for the emergence of a theory‐driven empirical science of animal teaching.

We have explored the evolution of teaching using simple mathematical models in which a single tutor transmits adaptive information to a related pupil at a cost. Teaching is expected to evolve where its costs are outweighed by the inclusive fitness benefits that result from the tutor's relatives being more likely to acquire the valuable information. We find that teaching is not favored where the pupil can easily acquire the information on its own, or through copying others, or for difficult to learn traits, where teachers typically do not possess the information to pass on to their relatives. This leads to a narrow range of traits for which teaching would be efficacious, which helps to explain the rarity of teaching in nature, its unusual distribution, and its highly specific nature. Further models that allow for cumulative cultural knowledge gain suggest that teaching evolved in humans despite, rather than because of, our strong imitative capabilities, and primarily because cumulative culture renders otherwise difficult‐to‐acquire valuable information available to teach.

Although the extent of animal teaching may, as yet, have been underestimated ( Hoppitt et al. 2008 ; Thornton and Raihani 2008 ; Laland and Hoppitt 2003 ), nonetheless the generality and pervasiveness of human teaching offers a striking contrast to teaching in other animals. Our analysis suggests this follows from two factors unique to our species. First, by virtue of our capacity for language, pedagogical cueing, teaching through imitation, manual shaping, and mental state attribution, which allows tutors to adjust their teaching to the state of knowledge of the pupil ( Tomasello and Call 1997 ; Premack 2007 ), the fidelity of human teaching ( T ) is likely to be unusually high relative to teaching in other animals ( Tomasello 1994 ; Csibra and Gergely 2006 ; Csibra 2007 ). Second, cumulative cultural evolution allows complex, high fitness ( Boyd and Richerson 1985 ; Henrich and McElreath 2003 ) traits that no individual could acquire on his or her own or through inadvertent social learning, ranging from ancestral lithic technology, tools and weaponry through to contemporary technology, to be present and available to teach in human populations.

Our analysis implies that teaching and cumulative culture reinforce each other, and may have coevolved, because teaching is more advantageous in a cumulative culture setting, whereas cumulative knowledge gain is frequently reliant on teaching. This may be why teaching is observed in humans but is rare or absent in old world primates ( Rapaport and Brown 2008 ), which by most accounts do not possess cumulative culture ( Tomasello 1994 ). In populations that lack cumulative culture, difficult to acquire information would not reach sufficiently high frequency to promote teaching. Although there are reports that teaching is not common in some hunter–gatherer societies (e.g., Whiten et al. 2003 ), such reports refer to an absence of direct instruction, and neglect the prevalence of more subtle forms of teaching, such as pedagogical cueing ( Csibra and Gergely 2006 ).

A small subset of animals do appear to satisfy the stringent conditions for teaching to evolve, and our findings may also shed light on the taxonomic distribution of teaching. For instance, the possibility of higher relatedness among female workers in the social insects than among diploid relatives may help to explain why teaching is observed in some tandem running ants and some social bees ( Franks and Richardson 2006 ; Leadbeater et al. 2006 ; Thornton and McAuliffe 2006 ; Hoppitt et al. 2008 ), but rarely in vertebrates (although strong conclusions over the frequency of teaching are difficult in the absence of experimental confirmation of teaching in a number of cases [e.g., cats] where circumstantial evidence for teaching exists). Here, and in the ESM, we present a formal analysis that establishes the precise conditions under which teaching will evolve in each genetic system. This suggests that there are likely to be circumstances in which teaching evolves more readily among haplodiploid workers than in diploids, other factors being equal, because of the possibility of higher levels of relatedness between workers in relatively monogamous haplodiploid colonies ( Cornwallis et al. 2010 ; see Craig 1979 and Foster et al. 2006 for discussion of relatedness in haplodiploids).

We also note that the most compelling cases of animal teaching occur in cooperatively breeding species (ants, bees, meerkats, pied babblers), while humans too have been characterized as cooperative breeders ( Hrdy 1999 ). Relative to noncooperative breeders, cooperative‐breeding helpers engage in costly ( Thornton and McAuliffe 2006 ), and prolonged ( Langen 2000 ), provisioning of the young, providing a selective environment for adaptations that would speed up the transition to independent feeding. It is possible that in cooperative breeders, the alleviation of heavy provisioning costs, or sharing of costs among multiple tutors, corresponds to a significantly lower per capita cost ( c t ) to an individual teacher, which Figure 1A shows that helps render teaching economical. Teaching may be favored only where the tutor's operational costs are low ( Thornton and Raihani 2008 ). Moreover, cooperative breeders often exhibit high levels of relatedness ( Cornwallis et al. 2010 ), further enhancing the likelihood of teaching evolving. The obvious counter‐example are felids, where teaching of young by mothers may perhaps be favored because hunting skills, or the opportunities to gain them, are difficult to get through asocial or inadvertent social learning (corresponding to low A and S but high T in our model).

In cases where teaching does evolve, we show that the average fitness of all individuals in the population increases, implying that teaching may have group beneficial properties. Our analysis could usefully be extended to multiple competing populations, where we might expect to see growth in populations capable of teaching, with group augmentation, which favors cooperative breeding ( Kokko et al. 2001 ), potentially further promoting teaching. We note that in meerkats, nonrelated individuals (immigrant males) sometimes feed and teach pups ( Thornton and McAuliffe 2006 ). Our model could usefully be extended to include direct benefits, and it is plausible that if such direct benefits are high and the costs are low, the likelihood of teaching among nonrelatives may increase.

Cooperation is defined as behavior that provides a benefit to another individual (recipient), and that is selected for because of its beneficial effect on the recipient ( West et al. 2007 ). Although in humans it is possible for an individual to be taught nonbeneficial traits (e.g., to take Class A drugs, or become a suicide bomber), the overwhelming majority of cases of teaching in humans, and all known cases of teaching in other animals, meet this definition of cooperation. We might ask, if most instances of teaching are also acts of cooperation, given the extensive literature on the evolution of cooperation ( Sachs et al. 2004 ; Lehmann and Keller 2006 ; West et al. 2007 ), is a specialized treatment of the evolution of teaching necessary? This question must be answered in the affirmative because teaching is a special case of cooperation, with unique properties that need to be incorporated into formal models to generate accurate predictions.

One property of teaching is that an individual's fitness depends not only on whether they possess the teaching genotype, but also whether they possessed the acquired information or skill. In this respect, teachers resemble the “phenotypic defectors” incorporated into some cooperation models ( Lotem et al. 1999 ; Sherratt and Roberts 2001 ), who are unable to cooperate through lack of physical resources (i.e., if sick or young). Central to our teaching model is the assumption that individuals can acquire information through other means than being taught it (for instance, through individual learning or inadvertent social learning). For instance, individuals can be taught to capture scorpions, to fashion a hand‐axe, or to solve differential equations, but with varying probabilities, they can also acquire this knowledge on their own through trial‐and‐error learning, or through imitation and other forms of copying. This would be analogous to individuals receiving the fitness benefits of cooperation without cooperation taking place. However, at least in principle, individuals could acquire physical resources, either through their own efforts (analogous to asocial learning), through scrounging (analogous to inadvertent social learning), or as recipients of cooperative acts (analogous to being taught). An important consequence of these alternative means of knowledge gain is that they potentially disconnect the frequency of teachers from the frequency of individuals with the relevant information or skill. Moreover, the frequency of this information among individuals possessing the teaching genotype is, in part, a function of the frequency of the information in the population at large (see eq. 1a ). Accordingly, to predict when a teaching event will occur, which is essential to investigate its evolution, it is necessary additionally to track the frequency of the information in the subpopulations, and not just allele, genotype, or phenotype frequencies. We are unaware of any model of cooperation that, in addition to the donation of physical resources by cooperators, also allows physical resources to be acquired both through individual's own efforts and through scrounging, and moreover that also tracks resource frequencies as dynamic variables among co‐operators and noncooperators. Furthermore, were such a model to be formulated it would still exhibit different dynamics to our teaching model. That is because physical resources and informational resources have quite different dynamical properties. For instance, an informed individual can exploit the information without depleting it, and can pass it on to others without hindering their ability to use it themselves. In addition, the fitness of the teaching genotype increases the more information there is in the population, because the teachers need to know the information to pass it on to their relatives. At the same time, the amount of information increases with the number of teachers (because teachers are better at spreading information than nonteachers). This is in contrast to most models of cooperation, where the benefit to defection tends to grow as cooperation becomes more common.

In this respect, our treatment also differs from previous models of the cultural evolution of cooperative behavior (e.g., Henrich and Boyd 2001 ; Boyd et al. 2003 ; Bowles and Gintis 2004 ), which have not distinguished between asocial learning, inadvertent social learning, and teaching, as a result of which the frequency of cooperative behavior is directly related to the frequency of socially transmitted information. Recent theory suggests that asocial learning could plausibly play an important role in cooperative behavior, and needs to be incorporated into cultural evolution models ( Lehmann et al. 2008 ). The findings of our analysis support this argument. Our most interesting results, such as that teaching is not favored both for very difficult and very easy to learn traits ( Fig. 1B ), and is promoted by cumulative culture ( Figs. 1C and 2 ), stem directly from this disconnect between the frequency of the teaching genotype and the frequency of the information to be taught, and the idiosyncratic properties of information flow.

These differences mean that the problem of the evolution of teaching does not reduce to the problem of the evolution of cooperation in any general form, at least not in a straightforward manner such that established theory fully explains the evolution of teaching. While some of our more intuitive findings (e.g., that the likelihood of teaching increases with the degree of relatedness between tutor and pupil and decreases with the costs of teaching, Fig. 1A ) are unsurprising in the light of current understanding of evolution of cooperation ( Sachs et al. 2004 ; West et al. 2007 ), the more significant and novel findings emerge solely from our treatment. Recent thinking within anthropology supports the argument that teaching is widespread in humans ( Tehrani and Riede 2008 ; Hewlett et al. 2011 ), in spite of earlier claims to the contrary (e.g., Lewis 2007 ; McDonald 2007 ), but that it takes on a variety of forms from direct verbal instruction to more subtle pedagogical cueing. Our models imply that teaching may be widespread in humans because cumulative cultural knowledge‐gain renders otherwise difficult to learn, high‐fitness information available for tutors to impart. While it is frequently claimed that human cooperation is unique ( Boyd and Richerson 1988 ; Henrich 2004 ), it is not immediately clear in what respects ( West et al. 2011 ). Our analysis provides one possible answer to this conundrum. West et al. (2011) point out that “complex and unique mechanisms to enforce cooperation have arisen in humans, such as contracts, laws, justice, trade and social norms…” It is likely that all of these mechanisms require teaching to spread. Human cooperation may, therefore, be unusually extensive as a result of cumulative culture and may be uniquely reliant on an important mechanism, less‐frequently observed in other species: teaching.


Associate Editor: S. West

Research supported in part by BBSRC (BB/D015812/1), EU (FP6–2004‐NEST‐PATH, CULTAPTATION, Ref: 043434) and ERC (Advanced Investigator Grant, EVOCULTURE, Ref: 232823) grants to KNL and a BBSRC studentship to LF. We are grateful to G. Brown, W. Hoppitt, J. Kendal, H. Lewis, L. Rendell, A. Thornton, M. Webster, and A. Whiten for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript, and to K. Eriksson, M. Feldman, R. Johnstone and G. Roberts for valuable discussion.

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Higher Education Needs More Socrates and Plato

By Ezekiel J. Emanuel and Harun Küçük

Dr. Emanuel and Dr. Küçük are on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, where Dr. Emanuel is a professor and the vice provost for global initiatives and Dr. Küçük is an associate professor of the history and sociology of science.

The right attacks colleges and universities as leftist and woke. Progressives castigate them as perpetuating patriarchy and white privilege. The burdens of these culture war assaults are compounded by parents worried that the exorbitant costs of higher education aren’t worth it.

No wonder Americans’ faith in universities is at a low. Only 36 percent of Americans have confidence in higher education, according to a survey by Gallup last year, a significant drop from eight years ago. And this was before colleges and universities across the country were swept up in a wave of protests and counter-protests over the war in Gaza.

But the problems facing American higher education are not just the protests and culture war attacks on diversity, course content, speech and speakers. The problem is that higher education is fundamentally misunderstood. In response, colleges and universities must reassert the liberal arts ideals that have made them great but that have been slipping away.

By liberal arts, we mean a broad-based education that aspires to send out into society an educated citizenry prepared to make its way responsibly in an ever-more complex and divided world. We worry that at many schools, students can fulfill all or most of their general education requirements and take any number of electives without having had a single meaningful discussion that is relevant to one’s political life as a citizen.

Over the past century, what made American higher education the best in the world is not its superiority in career training, but educating students for democratic citizenship, cultivating critical thinking and contributing to the personal growth of its students through self-creation. To revive American higher education, we need to reinvigorate these roots.

In Europe and many countries elsewhere, colleges and universities have undergraduates specialize from Day 1, focusing on developing area-specific skills and knowledge. College students are trained to become doctors, lawyers or experts in international relations, English literature or computer science.

In the United States, European-style specialization for medical, legal, business or public policy careers is the purpose of post-collegiate professional schools. Traditionally, the American college has been about imparting a liberal arts education, emphasizing reasoning and problem solving. Those enduring skills are the critical ingredients for flourishing companies and countries.

Historically, students arriving on American college campuses spent a majority of their first two years taking classes outside their projected majors. This exposed them to a common curriculum that had them engage with thoughtful writings of the past to develop the skills and capacity to form sound, independent judgments.

Over the past half century, American colleges and universities have moved away from this ideal , becoming less confident in their ability to educate students for democratic citizenship. This has led to a decline in their commitment to the liberal arts, a trend underscored in the results last year of a survey of chief academic officers at American colleges and universities by Inside Higher Ed. Nearly two-thirds agreed that liberal arts education was in decline, and well over half felt that politicians, college presidents and university boards were increasingly unsympathetic to the liberal arts.

Today, there is almost no emphasis on shared courses among majors that explore and debate big questions about the meaning of equality, justice, patriotism, personal obligations, civic responsibility and the purpose of a human life. Majors that once required only eight or 10 courses now require 14 or more, and students are increasingly double majoring — all of which crowds out a liberal arts education. Ambitious students eager to land a prestigious consulting, finance or tech job will find it too easy to brush aside courses in the arts, humanities and social and natural sciences — the core of a liberal education.

The devaluing of the first two years of a shared liberal arts education has shortchanged our students and our nation. Educating young adults to be citizens is why the first two years of college still matter.

To that end, the so-called Great Books have long been the preferred way to foster citizenship. This approach is not, contrary to critics on the left and right, about sanctifying specific texts for veneration or a mechanism for heritage transmission.

Books by Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman as well as Wollstonecraft, Austen, Woolf, Baldwin, Hurston and Orwell are worthy of introductory collegiate courses for students of all majors. These writers address the fundamental questions of human life. They explore the ideas of self-determination, friendship, virtue, equality, democracy and religious toleration and race that we have all been shaped by.

As students address those big questions, the Great Books authors provide a road map as they challenge and criticize one another and the conventional wisdom of the past. The Socrates of Plato’s dialogues is the exemplar — asking about beliefs and then subjecting them to respectful but critical analysis and skepticism.

These books are best studied in small seminar discussions, which model and inculcate in students democratic behavior. This discourse is an antidote to the grandstanding in today’s media and social media.

The teacher is less an expert in specific writers and more a role model for intellectual curiosity, asking probing questions, offering critical analyses and seeking deeper understanding. In an idealized Socratic fashion, these discussions require listening at length and speaking briefly and, most important, being willing to go where the argument leads.

Parents who are paying for college might question the value of spending $80,000 a year so that their son or daughter can read Plato, Hobbes and Thoreau instead of studying molecular biology or machine learning. But discussing life’s big value questions in seminars gives students personal engagement with professors that can never be reproduced in large lecture halls. Discussions among students on their deepest thoughts cultivates curiosity and empathy, and forges bonds of friendship important for citizenship and fulfilling lives.

Although we like to set ourselves apart from the past by appeals to modernity, the fundamental questions that we find ourselves asking are not always modern, and the latest answer is not always right. But how would you know how to think beyond the readily presented check boxes if you haven’t done the work of laying things out and putting them back together for yourself?

War was no less a concern for Thucydides, Tacitus and Thoreau than it is today. Discussing Great Books allows students to gain distance from the daily noise and allows their reason to roam free among principles and foundations rather than becoming absorbed in contemporary events. Our biggest problems are often best addressed not by leaning in but by stepping away to reflect on enduring perspectives.

Liberal arts education is not value neutral. That is why it is indispensable today. Freedom of thought, critical reasoning, empathy for others and respectful disagreement are paramount for a flourishing democratic society. Without them, we get the unreasoned condemnations so pervasive in today’s malignant public discourse. With them, we have a hope of furthering the shared governance that is vital to America’s pluralistic society.

Ezekiel Emanuel and Harun Küçük are on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, where Dr. Emanuel is a professor and the vice provost for global initiatives and Dr. Küçük is an associate professor of the history and sociology of science.

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World Economic Situation and Prospects 2024

Global economic growth is projected to slow from an estimated 2.7 per cent in 2023 to 2.4 per cent in 2024, trending below the pre-pandemic growth rate of 3.0 per cent, according to the United Nations World Economic Situation and Prospects (WESP) 2024. This latest forecast comes on the heels of global economic performance exceeding expectations in 2023. However, last year’s stronger-than-expected GDP growth masked short-term risks and structural vulnerabilities. 

The UN’s flagship economic report presents a sombre economic outlook for the near term. Persistently high interest rates, further escalation of conflicts, sluggish international trade, and increasing climate disasters, pose significant challenges to global growth.

The prospects of a prolonged period of tighter credit conditions and higher borrowing costs present strong headwinds for a world economy saddled with debt, while in need of more investments to resuscitate growth, fight climate change and accelerate progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

“2024 must be the year when we break out of this quagmire. By unlocking big, bold investments we can drive sustainable development and climate action, and put the global economy on a stronger growth path for all,” said António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General. “We must build on the progress made in the past year towards an SDG Stimulus of at least $500 billion per year in affordable long-term financing for investments in sustainable development and climate action.”

Subdued growth in developed and developing economies Growth in several large, developed economies, especially the United States, is projected to decelerate in 2024 given high interest rates, slowing consumer spending and weaker labour markets. The short-term growth prospects for many developing countries – particularly in East Asia, Western Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean – are also deteriorating because of tighter financial conditions, shrinking fiscal space and sluggish external demand. Low-income and vulnerable economies are facing increasing balance-of-payments pressures and debt sustainability risks. Economic prospects for small island developing States, in particular, will be constrained by heavy debt burdens, high interest rates and increasing climate-related vulnerabilities, which threaten to undermine, and in some cases, even reverse gains made on the SDGs.

Inflation trending down but recovery in labour markets still uneven Global inflation is projected to decline further, from an estimated 5.7 per cent in 2023 to 3.9 per cent in 2024. Price pressures are, however, still elevated in many countries and any further escalation of geopolitical conflicts risks renewed increases in inflation. 

In about a quarter of all developing countries, annual inflation is projected to exceed 10 per cent in 2024, the report highlights. Since January 2021, consumer prices in developing economies have increased by a cumulative 21.1 per cent, significantly eroding the economic gains made following the COVID-19 recovery. Amid supply-side disruptions, conflicts and extreme weather events, local food price inflation remained high in many developing economies, disproportionately affecting the poorest households. 

“Persistently high inflation has further set back progress in poverty eradication, with especially severe impacts in the least developed countries,” said Li Junhua, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs. “It is absolutely imperative that we strengthen global cooperation and the multilateral trading system, reform development finance, address debt challenges and scale up climate financing to help vulnerable countries accelerate towards a path of sustainable and inclusive growth.”

According to the report, the global labour markets have seen an uneven recovery from the pandemic crisis. In developed economies, labour markets have remained resilient despite a slowdown in growth. However, in many developing countries, particularly in Western Asia and Africa, key employment indicators, including unemployment rates, are yet to return to pre-pandemic levels. The global gender employment gap remains high, and gender pay gaps not only persist but have even widened in some occupations.   

Related Sustainable Development Goals

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