PARENT SESSION
Contributed Oral Session 68: Ecology Education II
Tuesday, August 9, 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM, Meeting Room 521 A, Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal
Evolution education: Teaching for conceptual change.
Calabi, Prassede*,1,3, Shtulman, Andrew2, 1 MindFire Consulting, Winchester, MA, USA3 U Mass Boston, Boston, MA2 Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
ABSTRACT- Students often maintain two sets of conceptions: those they believe and those required by the teacher. Evolution is an area of study particularly plagued by unarticulated misconceptions. We describe a teaching approach and materials that created opportunities for getting students to confront, articulate, disassemble, and ultimately replace their non-genetic, non-variational assumptions about species adaptation. This teaching intervention was administered to a small group of upper level undergraduate students in the context of a one semester course in evolution and behavior. Students' beliefs about variation, inheritance, survival, domestication, speciation, and extinction were assessed both before and after the intervention.
Key words: conceptual change, misconception, evolution, teach