Changing Student Misconceptions about Evolution through an Innovative Laboratory Curriculum in Biological Anthropology

有确凿的证据证明，在接受生命科学课程之前甚至之后，大学生对进化论存在重大误解。研究人员曾试图在大学水平的以进化论为基础的课程中评估和解决这些误解，但只取得了好坏参半的成功。仍然需要开发和测试工具和方法来帮助学生获得对进化的准确理解。本项目为生物人类学导论课程创建、使用和评估一个创新的实验室课程，以解决和纠正对进化论的误解。它采用以学生为中心和以探究为基础的方法，挑战学生具体应用进化论和生物人类学的核心理论和概念，并积极参与使用科学方法解决问题。这个项目将进化论作为一个积极的过程来教授。这种方法旨在帮助学生理解进化是如何在人类环境中发生的。该项目让学生积极参与DNA /分子和其他与其他课程材料相结合的实验室证据。这种方法在整个学期中充分而明确地嵌入了进化的挑战，并且几乎完全集中在适合生物人类学的人类例子上。

There is a solid body of evidence documenting significant misconceptions about evolution among college students before and even after instruction in the life sciences. Researchers have attempted to evaluate and address such misconceptions in evolution-based courses at the college level, but only with mixed success. There is still a need to develop and test tools and methods to help students gain an accurate understanding of evolution. This project is creating, using, and evaluating an innovative laboratory curriculum for an introductory biological anthropology course to address and correct misconceptions about evolution. It is using a student-centered and inquiry-based approach that challenges students to apply the core theory and concepts of evolution and biological anthropology specifically, and to engage actively in solving problems using scientific methods. The project is teaching evolution as an active process. This approach is designed to help students understand how evolution occurs in a human context. The project is engaging students actively with DNA /molecular and other laboratory evidence that are integrated with other course materials. This approach embeds evolutionary challenges fully and explicitly throughout the semester and focuses almost entirely on human examples as appropriate to biological anthropology.