Evolving Minds in Early Elementary School: Foundations for a Learning Sequence on Natural Selection Using Stories

ECR（教育和人力资源核心研究）项目强调基础STEM教育研究，这将产生该领域的基础知识。研究表明，在世界范围内，尽管自然选择对生命科学很重要，但它仍然是生物学中最被广泛误解的过程之一。具体来说，研究表明，关于自然选择的科学误解不仅存在于通常作为自然选择进化教学目标的高中生和本科生中，而且令人不安的是，也存在于许多接受过培训的教授自然选择的教师中。研究进一步表明，许多这些误解的起源可以追溯到小学阶段发现的直觉认知偏见。这个项目将通过建立和测试小学早期自然选择的学习序列来解决这个问题，在直觉理论误解可能已经根深蒂固之前。这项工作将扩大目前由一所大学支持的现有研究和教育基础设施，使之成为包括小学教育工作者、课程开发人员、专业发展提供者、跨学科学术研究人员和认知发展专家顾问在内的学校伙伴关系。该项目的重点是了解在儿童的表征约束、直觉认知偏见的发展和巩固以及教师科学焦虑的情况下，所提出的自然选择学习序列对小学生和教师是否可行和有益。两个中心目标将是：(1)开发核心架构并探索扩展小学自然选择学习序列的可行性；(2)研究开发的故事干预材料对小学教师教育专业发展的益处。六项干预将通过一系列迭代设计的实验室、课后或课堂实证研究进行，以探索通过自然选择向K-2儿童讲授物种内和物种间适应的机械可行性。由于研究将产生的数据是非二元的性质，核心分析将采用重复测量的有序逻辑回归，并用卡方检验进行显著性检验。效应大小将通过优势比进行索引。这项工作的结果将通过产生对儿童的见解来推进科学知识和教育实践。作为解释性思想家和理论建设者的能力。材料和产品（故事书、动画和评估工具）将直接使马萨诸塞州和全国的学校、教师、儿童和家长受益。

The ECR (Education and Human Resources Core Research) program emphasizes fundamental STEM education research that will generate foundational knowledge in the field. Research shows that world-wide, despite its importance to the life sciences, natural selection remains one of the most widely misunderstood processes in biology. Specifically, studies reveal that scientific misconceptions about natural selection not only persist among high school students and undergraduates who are usual targets of instruction on evolution by natural selection, but, disturbingly, also among many of the teachers trained to teach them. Research further reveals that the origin of many of these misconceptions can be traced to intuitive cognitive biases found at the elementary school level. This project will address this problem by building and testing a learning sequence on natural selection at the early elementary grades before intuitive theoretical misconceptions are likely to have become entrenched. This effort will expand existing infrastructure for research and education currently supported through a university, to school partnership involving elementary educators, curriculum developers, professional development providers, interdisciplinary academic researchers and cognitive development expert consultants. The project focuses on understanding whether the proposed natural selection learning sequence is even viable and beneficial for elementary school students and teachers given children's representational constraints, the development and entrenchment of intuitive cognitive biases and teacher science anxiety. The two central aims will be to: (1) develop the core architecture and explore the feasibility of an expanded elementary school learning sequence on natural selection; (2) examine the educative professional development benefits to elementary school teachers of the developed story-based intervention materials. Six interventions will be conducted through an iteratively designed series of laboratory, afterschool, or classroom empirical studies to explore the viability of mechanistically teaching K-2 children about within- and between-species adaptation by natural selection. Due to the non-binary nature of data that will be generated by the studies, core analyses will be repeated measures ordinal logistic regressions with chi-squared tests for significance. Effect sizes will be indexed by odds ratio. Results from this work will advance scientific knowledge and educational practice by yielding insights about children?s capacities as explanatory thinkers and theory-builders. Materials and products (storybooks, animations and assessment tools) will directly benefit schools, teachers, children and parents in the State of Massachusetts and nationally.