Building High School Students' Understanding of Evolution

理解进化论是理解当代生物学的基础，但许多学生并不理解进化论的核心思想。学生们曲解了系统发育树，他们误解了共同祖先的基本概念，他们对进化时间的把握很差。这个项目将通过开发和测试一个新的高中课程单元和侧重于生物进化的评估措施来解决与进化有关的广泛误解。犹他大学遗传科学学习中心和美国科学促进会正在合作开发一个课程单元，以模拟下一代科学标准的三个维度的整合：学科核心思想、科学实践和交叉概念。新课程还将整合共同核心数学关于抽象和定量推理的标准，以及针对特定学科内容撰写辩论的英语语言艺术标准。这个项目建立在以前资助的NSF项目的基础上，该项目开发并测试了关于自然选择的六个原型课程。在课堂教学中，这些课程显示出显著提高学生对自然选择的理解和减少他们对自然选择和统计学的误解的初步前景。这个研究和开发项目基于这样的假设：当课程材料和教学具有某些可识别的特征时，当专业发展经验为教师准备好使用这些材料和教学实践时，学生将更好地理解关于生物进化的学科核心思想。研究问题和研究计划旨在使用随机对照试验设计来检验这一假设，该设计允许反复几轮改进。这项研究将从美国各地聘请20名9-10年级的生物教师，他们教授不同的学生。为了进行这项研究，该项目将开发学生理解能力的衡量标准和教师教学知识的衡量标准。还将开发一种基于证据的进化论证的措施，供教师和学生使用。

Understanding evolution is fundamental to understanding contemporary biology, but many students do not understand the core ideas of evolutionary theory. Students misinterpret phylogenetic trees, they misunderstand fundamental concepts of common ancestry, and they have a poor grasp of evolutionary time. This project will address widespread misunderstandings related to evolution by developing and testing a new high school curriculum unit and assessment measures focusing on biological evolution. The University of Utah Genetic Science Learning Center and the American Association for the Advancement of Science are collaborating to develop a curriculum unit that models integration of the three dimensions of the Next Generation Science Standards: disciplinary core ideas, science practices, and crosscutting concepts. The new curriculum will also integrate Common Core Mathematics standards on reasoning abstractly and quantitatively, and an English Language Arts standard for writing arguments focused on discipline-specific content. This project builds on a previously funded NSF project that developed and tested six prototype lessons on natural selection. In classroom enactments the lessons showed preliminary promise for significantly increasing student understanding of natural selection and decreasing their misconceptions about natural selection and statistics.This research and development project is based on the hypothesis that students will better understand the disciplinary core ideas about biological evolution when curriculum materials and instruction have certain identified features and when professional development experiences prepare teachers to use those materials and instructional practices. The research questions and research plan are designed to test this hypothesis using a randomized controlled trial design that allows for iterative rounds of refinement. The study will engage 20 teachers of grades 9-10 biology from across the U.S. who teach a diversity of students. To conduct the research, the project will develop measures of student understanding and a measure of teacher content knowledge. A measure of evidence-based evolution argumentation will also be developed for use with teachers and students.