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Thinking Evolutionarily Evolution Education Across the Life Sciences: Summary of a Convocation (2012) / Chapter Skim
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4 Confronting Controversy
Pages 33-38

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From page 33...
... OVERCOMING FEAR Paul Strode, who teaches biology at Fairview High School in Boulder, Colorado, grew up in Indiana and went to a small liberal arts college, where he took courses in zoology, genetics, and ecology but learned very little about evolution. After he moved to Seattle to teach high school biol ogy, he left the evolution chapter to the end of the year, as many teachers do, and warned his students the day before the session began that the class was going to discuss evolution because it was part of the curricu lum.
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From page 34...
... The solution, he said, starts "with kids understanding how science works and teachers understanding how science works and teaching teachers in a more effective way." "BELIEVING" IN EVOLUTION Betty Carvellas, who taught science for 39 years at the middle and high school levels and who served as a member of the authoring committee of Science, Evolution, and Creationism (National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine, 2008) , taught her students that they do not necessarily need to "believe" in evolution, but they do need to understand the scientific evidence demonstrating that evolution is a fact.
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From page 35...
... These ideas about scientific thinking have to be built starting in kindergarten. Young students love to do the things that develop scientific understanding, such as asking questions, developing models, planning and carrying out investigations, analyzing and interpreting data, think ing mathematically, constructing explanations, and engaging in argument from evidence.
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From page 36...
... Many of their objections can be overcome by "simply addressing that ignorance." In teaching evolution, Hillis starts with familiar examples from the present and recent past and gradually works his way toward the distant past. "They can see that the exact same concepts and things that they know and can understand in the present or in the recent past apply to the ancient past." He also seeks to show how the mechanisms of evolution that can be observed today are sufficient to account for major evolutionary changes over long periods of time.
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From page 37...
... Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. National Research Council.
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