This dissertation is an extended prescription for the inclusion of social justice in high school biology (HSB) curricula. Chapter 1 is context: a review of social injustice (mainly racism) in the US, and the specious scientific justifications for it. Chapter 2 explores how three veteran teachers introduce social justice in HSB classes. A…

Over the course of a two-year curriculum field test study that implemented a curriculum-based professional learning framework, we investigated the factors that influenced teachers' willingness and ability to implement NGSS-aligned, phenomenon-based storylines for teaching the nature of science, evolution, and climate change. Through qualitative…

Due to the controversies surrounding the topic of evolution among religious and non-religious people alike, the treatment of biological evolution in education--both teaching and learning--is a potential minefield. The goal of this study was to probe the insights of Israeli stakeholders in education regarding the revision of the Israeli science and…

An online curriculum about biological evolution was designed according to the "Promoting Evidentiary Reasoning and Self-Regulation Online" (PERSON) theoretical framework to support evidentiary reasoning and self-regulation. An efficacy study was conducted with 83 suburban high school biology students using design-based research methods.…

Evolution was introduced into the senior secondary school Life Sciences curriculum in South Africa for the first time in 2008. Research in other countries shows that evolution is an extremely controversial topic to teach, raising serious concerns for teachers. Curriculum change theory dealing with "stages of concern" suggests that…