Developing & Testing Curricula for Teaching Evolutionary Concepts at the Elementary School Level
| Autor: | Gregory F. Grether |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2021 |
| Předmět: |
Teaching method
education evolutionary time adaptation Education Concept learning evolution vestigial traits Mathematics education Curriculum development 0501 psychology and cognitive sciences School level NRC framework Curriculum Science instruction 05 social sciences 050301 education natural selection Agricultural and Biological Sciences (miscellaneous) Next Generation Science Standards Active learning science education fossils General Agricultural and Biological Sciences 0503 education common ancestry 050104 developmental & child psychology |
| Zdroj: | The American Biology Teacher, vol 83, iss 2 |
| ISSN: | 1938-4211 0002-7685 |
| DOI: | 10.1525/abt.2021.83.2.96 |
| Popis: | Evolution by natural selection is key to understanding life and of considerable practical importance in public health, medicine, biotechnology, and agriculture. The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) include natural selection among several evolutionary concepts that all third-graders should know. This article explores a novel approach to developing and testing curricula for teaching natural selection and related concepts to children. College students developed lesson plans with specific evolutionary learning objectives based on the NGSS and taught them at elementary schools. Learning was assessed with a pre/post-test design, and a subset of students was retested after two years. After just two hours of instruction and active-learning activities, students of all three grade levels tested (grades 3–5) demonstrated substantial improvement in their understanding of evolutionary concepts. Students who were retested in grade 5 scored higher than fifth-graders who had not participated previously. The most challenging concepts for all grade levels were common ancestry and natural selection, but fifth-graders showed more improvement than third- and fourth-graders. If this finding is substantiated by further research, an adjustment to the NGSS schedule might be warranted. Spacing evolutionary biology concepts out might be a better strategy than concentrating them all in grade 3. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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