Teachers are eager for professional development on teaching evolution, especially if it includes direct ties to relevant curricula and detailed lesson plans. Howard Hughes Medical Institute's BioInteractive Online Professional Learning: Evolution course was developed to provide educators with free, in-depth, multimedia resources that highlight…

Is it possible to teach biology without mentioning evolution? The answer is yes, but it is not possible for students to understand biology without the evolutionary context on which the meaning and intellectual value of biological concepts depend. Meaningful learning of evolution requires (1) that the students incorporate new knowledge into a…

Many students have very robust misconceptions about natural selection, stemming from intuitive theories that form a child's earliest understandings of the natural world. For example, students often imagine that species evolve in response to environmental pressures that cause a need for change and that all individuals in the population…

Arguing from evidence is one of eight key science practices in which students should engage. It is an essential component of science, yet students have difficulties with this practice. We describe a scaffolded claims-evidence-reasoning (CER) argumentation framework that is embedded within a new eight-week, freely available curriculum unit…

Understanding natural selection and adaptation are important precursors to learning evolution (NGSS Lead States 2013), the central unifying principle of biology. This lesson sequence, guided by the Five Practices Model (Cartier et al. 2013), incorporates data described by Andersson (1982) that details female choice in a population that eventually…

This review essay affirms the work Mr. Red does with his students to support their learning about evolution and how his approach agrees with the realities of teaching evolution in the American South. It then shows how focusing on understanding, but not necessarily belief, adds to Mr. Red's apparent neutrality a complimentary pedagogical approach…

A lesson that focuses on the intricate co-evolution of flowers with their pollinators is one way to help students learn the delicate balance in nature and help ensure that our actions do not upset this balance. In this lesson students use the engineering design process to engineer a flower that is a perfect model for its chosen pollinator. Next,…

In the document "Curriculum Standard of General Senior High School Curriculum and Biology (2017 ed.)" published in 2018, developing students' core literacy as the fundamental task and value pursuit of current educational and teaching curriculum reform in China. Life concept is the key element of the core literacy of biology in senior…

Understanding the nature of science has long been a focus of science education reform efforts, including the Next Generation of Science Standards. Students' views about the process of how scientific knowledge is acquired has been shown to affect their ability to learn scientific concepts. Integrating the nature of science into science lesson plans…

Evolution can be a difficult concept for students, even though it is an organizing principle in biology. It can also be a challenge for teachers to cover evolution properly (or at all) in the classroom, whether due to personal attitudes or lack of knowledge or confidence in the material (Rutledge and Mitchell 2002). Even in some states where…

This practical lesson describes how students in six eighth grade science classes participated in a lesson combining the National Core Arts Standards with the Next Generation Science Standards. The goal of the lesson was to provide visual representations of finch beak form and function so students could better understand genetic variation and how…

New phylogenomic tools have made it possible to construct a robust phylogenetic tree of mollusks. This tree can be used to teach important evolutionary principles.

Teachers are being challenged to engage students in ways that will elevate student interest and understanding of concepts in science and encourage students to gather evidence to support what we know about science. It is critical for teachers to have budget-friendly, supporting activities that are aligned with current educational standards, that…

Evolutionary experiments are usually difficult to perform in the classroom because of the large sizes and long timescales of experiments testing evolutionary hypotheses. Computer applications give students a window to observe evolution in action, allowing them to gain comfort with the process of natural selection and facilitating inquiry…

This article reviews the famous "matching problem," with a particular focus on the expected number of objects that are correctly placed. The author discusses the following topics: three versions suitable for teaching the matching problem in the classroom; the solution to the matching problem; the use of the strong form of mathematical…