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

有一个坚实的证据记录了大学生在生命科学教学之前甚至之后对进化的重大误解。研究人员试图在大学水平的进化论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，以帮助学生获得对进化的准确理解。该项目正在创建，使用和评估一个创新的实验室课程，介绍生物人类学课程，以解决和纠正对进化的误解。它使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。该项目将进化作为一个积极的过程进行教学。这种方法旨在帮助学生了解进化如何在人类环境中发生。该项目是积极参与学生与DNA /分子和其他实验室证据，与其他课程材料相结合。 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.