R&D: Evolution Readiness: A Modeling Approach

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This project will use computer-based models of interacting organisms and their environments to support a learning progression leading to an appreciation of the theory of evolution and evidence that supports it. The proposal team will build hypermodels: curricular activities and formative assessments that link manipulable models to text and multimedia materials. The target population is public school students in grades 3 through 5. Students are not expected to come to a full understanding of every facet of this most encompassing of theories. However, it is anticipated that they will come to appreciate evolution as an emergent behavior; the remarkable outcome of a series of elementary processes that they have learned about through observation of natural phenomena as well as the direct manipulation of computational models. Evolution is perhaps the most challenging subject in the K-12 life science curriculum. This project will create a research-based curriculum, starting at very early grades and centered on progressively complex models that exhibit emergent behavior. Taking advantage of technology created in prior NSF-funded research, students' actions will be tracked as they interact with computer-based models, collecting extremely fine-grained performance data. Previous research indicates such data is a robust predictor of subsequent learning gains as measured by conventional question-and-answer assessments, even on items that do not relate directly to the experiments performed. By continuing this line of research, the project will help to improve the teaching of complex scientific topic areas and provide a reliable means of directly assessing students' conceptual understanding and inquiry skills, as opposed to their recall of science facts. Evolution is a particularly daunting subject to understand, as the evidence for it is often indirect and the theory rests largely on phenomena that cannot be directly observed. By combining advances in educational technology with improved understanding of young children's cognitive development, this project will produce an empirically validated learning progression for teaching evolution. It is anticipated that students who follow this progression in elementary and middle school will better understand both the implications of the model and the evidentiary and theoretical basis for it.