{"id":2916,"date":"2011-02-12T08:09:49","date_gmt":"2011-02-12T14:09:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/?p=2916"},"modified":"2011-02-12T08:16:10","modified_gmt":"2011-02-12T14:16:10","slug":"i-teach-evolution-do-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/?p=2916","title":{"rendered":"I Teach Evolution!  Do You?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/02\/08\/science\/08creationism.html\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2917\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/twitterevolution.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"540\" height=\"134\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/twitterevolution.jpg 540w, https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/twitterevolution-300x74.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 540px) 100vw, 540px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Earlier this week, I scrolled upon the\u00a0above\u00a0post on my twitter account, followed the link to the New York Times article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/02\/08\/science\/08creationism.html\" target=\"_blank\">On Evolution, Biology Teachers Stray From Lesson Plan<\/a>\u00a0(<a href=\"http:\/\/richarddawkins.net\/articles\/589097-on-evolution-biology-teachers-stray-from-lesson-plan\" target=\"_blank\">duplicate post<\/a> that you don&#8217;t have to login in to read) by Nicholas Bakalar, and read&#8230;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s was\u00a0struck by&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;Only 28% of\u00a0biology teachers consistently describe straightforwardly the evidence for evolution and explain the ways in which it is a unifying theme in all of biology.&#8221;\u00a0\u00a0 So, 72% of biology teachers don&#8217;t do this?\u00a0 Could this be true?<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;13 percent explicitly advocate creationism.&#8221;\u00a0 So, 59%\u00a0may accept evolution in some manner but just don&#8217;t teach it?\u00a0 Wow!<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s hard to be optimistic, but Eric Plutzer, one of the authors of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencemag.org\/content\/331\/6016\/404.summary\" target=\"_blank\">Defeating Creationism in the Courtroom, But Not in the Classroom<\/a>\u00a0(the\u00a0research being cited in the NY Times article) stated that, &#8220;We think the \u2018cautious 60 percent\u2019 represent a group of educators who, if they were better trained in science in general and in evolution in particular, would be more confident in their ability to explain controversial topics to their students, to parents, and to school board members.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&#8230;\u00a0this sad commentary\u00a0reported\u00a0during\u00a0the week of Charles Darwin&#8217;s 202nd birthday!\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>So, is there anything that we can do as a KABT community to help &#8220;better train&#8221; biology teachers\u00a0in science and evolution?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I really don&#8217;t know, but I thought I could\u00a0at least\u00a0share some of what I\u00a0have done\u00a0to teach evolution during my 18 years\u00a0in the\u00a0freshman biology classroom.<\/p>\n<p>Below, I relate\u00a0the general structure of\u00a0the\u00a0freshman biology courses that I have taught, and\u00a0the introductory setting that I tried to establish.\u00a0 These brief comments are followed by\u00a0the first of a series of\u00a0activities\u00a0(other will\u00a0be presented\u00a0in future posts) which I\u00a0have used\u00a0to provoke a thoughtful\u00a0and respectful discussion of the\u00a0biological concept of race.\u00a0 After I finish with the series of posts on biological race, I will think about backing up\u00a0and filling you in on some of the other activities, discussion, homework assignments, etc&#8230; that I used to teach the fundamental concepts of natural selection and speciation.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Course Perspective<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t claim to have\u00a0expert\u00a0knowledge of evolution, nor do I have special abilities when it comes to teaching evolution, but\u00a0I can demonstrate that\u00a0at least\u00a025% of my class time in freshman biology was spent learning about evolution.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Two of my 8 units, over the course of the year, were devoted\u00a0to\u00a0the topic, and I integrated the evolutionary perspective\u00a0into some course work during my\u00a0previous units on classification, ecology, as well as subsequent units on cell biology, cell energetics, molecular biology, and genetics.\u00a0 The activities that I will be presenting in this, and subsequent posts, were some of the culminating activites\u00a0my students completed at\u00a0the end of\u00a0my unit on genetics second semester.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Thus, it\u00a0is safe to say that I generally accept Theodosius Dobzhansky&#8217;s\u00a0claim that, &#8220;Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Introductory Setting\u00a0for Teaching Evolutionary Biology<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Like many biology teachers, I began the school year\u00a0establishing the difference between science and non-science through a few lessons where we covered\u00a0concepts including empirical and rational epistemologies, observation,\u00a0discovery-based and hypothesis-based science,\u00a0and theory.\u00a0 One\u00a0of\u00a0my lessons was\u00a0motivated by Brad Williamson, who\u00a0introduced\u00a0me to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wgbh\/nova\/teachers\/programs\/2012_psychics.html\" target=\"_blank\">Secret of the Psychics Nova video<\/a> and\u00a0the accompanying\u00a0con\u00a0he used\u00a0to\u00a0perform on his students (more on that later).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>One important goal of this introductory material was to set the appropriate\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/randy-olson\/creating-versus-fostering_b_817537.html\" target=\"_blank\">tenor<\/a> in the classroom.\u00a0 Although I have never had a single significant distracting classroom experience involving creationism with students or\u00a0their parents, I thought it was important to develop a standard for what constitutes science from the beginning so that if later issues popped-up, they could be\u00a0judged against\u00a0this\u00a0pre-established standard.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Biology of Race and Inequality<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This first of a series of activities was conducted at the very end of the school year at the end of my unit on genetics after having covered standard Mendelian genetics and content associated with inheritance in humans.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Lesson 1<\/strong>\u00a0&#8211; <strong>Comparing Chimpanzees using mtDNA Sequences<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\"><strong>Background<\/strong><\/span> &#8211; In the early summer of 2002, I attended a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dnalc.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Dolan DNA Learning Center<\/a> workshop at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stowers-institute.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Stowers Institute <\/a>where a group of biology instructors were introduced to one wet lab and a number of bioinformatics activities associated with\u00a0their new educational program called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.geneticorigins.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Genetic Origins<\/a>.\u00a0 Scott Bronson and Ewe Hilgert ran the workshop that specifically\u00a0introduced us to the study of\u00a0mitochondrial (mt) DNA and Alu genomic elements.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\"><strong>Objective<\/strong><\/span>&#8211; To introduce students to the concept of subspecies through\u00a0study of\u00a0the geographic distribution of chimpanzee populations\u00a0and\u00a0a comparison of\u00a0 mtDNA from some of these isolated populations, in an effort to prime them for a discrepant event with regard to a\u00a0similar activity involving humans (they may even remember that Linneaus had <a href=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/b\/bb\/Linnaeus_-_Regnum_Animale_%281735%29.png\" target=\"_blank\">segregated humans into distinct\u00a0categories<\/a>\u00a0as well, although I would not have reminded them of this directly).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/Wikipedia_Chimp_Map.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2948\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/Wikipedia_Chimp_Map.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/Wikipedia_Chimp_Map.png 800w, https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/Wikipedia_Chimp_Map-300x131.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\"><strong>Introducing the Activity<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0&#8211; When starting things off, I most would commonly show a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/File:Pan.png\" target=\"_blank\">map of the\u00a0ranges of the subspecies of chimpanzee found in Africa<\/a>\u00a0(above).\u00a0 I would prompt the students to remember what we\u00a0learned about scientific names from first semester (we had only learned about bionomials not trinomials), and proceed\u00a0in having\u00a0them hypothesize why these populations of chimpanzees were given\u00a0distinct\u00a0three word names.\u00a0 It was pretty clear to\u00a0most students that\u00a0the\u00a0trinomials may represent a single species\u00a0that has recently begun to develop geographically isolated populations.\u00a0 I would likewise prompt them to remember what we\u00a0had discovered\u00a0about processes of speciation (we had already learned about allopatric speciation and pre and post-zygotic isolating mechanisms), and have then hypothesize differences that may exist within mitochondrial DNA samples taken from three of the subspecies (see the activity below).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">Once some thoughts had been generated, I would model the procedure in the activity that follows, making sure that\u00a0students understood how to cut the mtDNA sequences from the supplemental document below and successfully paste them into the appropriate online sequence alignment tools.\u00a0 Realize 1) that other alignment tools could be used (I always had problems with the Dolan Center&#8217;s online tools and googled this one up years ago) and 2) one can actually speed things up by pasting all the sequences at once.\u00a0 I usually showed the students the short cut later when we discussed their answers at the end of the class period or the following day.\u00a0 I imagine that using the slower process actually gave them time to think about the data as it was processed resulting in more thoughtful answers.\u00a0 In a subsequent activity with human mtDNA sequences, I would allow them to use the short cut\u00a0because they would then have a good enough\u00a0understanding of significance of what they were doing.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Student Handout for the activity\u00a0&#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/Comparing-Chimpanzees.doc\"><strong>Comparing Chimpanzees<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<li>Supplemental\u00a0Student Document &#8211;\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/Chimp_mtDNA_Sequences.doc\"><strong>Chimp_mtDNA_Sequences<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Let\u00a0everyone know if you have any questions or general words of advice in response to things said.\u00a0 Otherwise, thanks for your attention, and I will be talking to you again soon!<\/p>\n<p>Happy Birthday Chuck!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/02\/15\/science\/15obfrog.html?_r=1&amp;smid=tw-nytimesscience\" target=\"_blank\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier this week, I scrolled upon the\u00a0above\u00a0post on my twitter account, followed the link to the New York Times article On Evolution, Biology Teachers Stray From Lesson Plan\u00a0(duplicate post that you don&#8217;t have to login in to read) by Nicholas Bakalar, and read&#8230;\u00a0 Here&#8217;s was\u00a0struck by&#8230; &#8220;Only 28% of\u00a0biology teachers consistently describe straightforwardly the evidence<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/?p=2916\">+ Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes","_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[391,396,389,390,405,11,395,404,392,394,386,393,12,388,387,385,403],"class_list":["post-2916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teaching-resources","tag-africa","tag-biological-race","tag-chimpanzee","tag-chimpanzees","tag-dna","tag-evolution","tag-genetic-origins","tag-mitochondria","tag-mtdna","tag-phylogenetic-tree","tag-race","tag-sequence-alignment","tag-speciation","tag-species","tag-subspecies","tag-teaching-biology","tag-teaching-evolution"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2916"}],"version-history":[{"count":40,"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2985,"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2916\/revisions\/2985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}