Emerging Research-Empirical Research--Evolving Minds: Children's Learning of Natural Selection from Picture Books

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The goal of this research project is to design classroom-level interventions that will guide students toward a basic understanding of biological adaptation through natural selection using picture books as pedagogical tools of instruction. The proposer engages support from experts in related fields to help develop "tailor-made" picture books to convey complex scientific information to 400 kindergarten through second grade (K-2) students in 32 schools in the Worcester Public School District. The questions for the study include: (1) whether it is possible to foster a scientifically accurate and productive understanding of adaptation by natural selection in Grades K-2 classrooms using picture storybooks; (2) what the most effective components of such a classroom intervention are; (3) whether complex biological concepts are more accurately learned by young children when explanations are couched in terms of human or in terms of non-human animals; and (4) whether early instruction about the mechanism of natural selection modifies young children's untutored tendency to explain natural entities by reference to function, a teleological bias is at the heart of older students' scientifically inaccurate reasoning. Building on a NSF-supported pilot study, this research will consist of four individual studies, each building on lessons-learned from the one before. The first three studies will include a pre-test, intervention, immediate, and delayed post-test design to explore individual-level changes in grade K-2 students' learning and generalization about the logic of natural selection. Study four will be a classroom-level intervention whose structure depends on wisdom accumulated from the first three studies. It will involve picture book reading sessions with small groups of children followed by assessments of their learning. These sequential studies will be administered orally by the proposer.