Evolution is foundational to understanding biology, yet learners at all stages have incomplete and incorrect ideas that persist beyond graduation. Contextual features of prompts (e.g., taxon of organism, acquisition vs. loss of traits, etc.) have been shown to influence both the learning process and the ideas students express in explanations of…

Scientists frequently conduct research in remote field locations, yet in close proximity to local communities. However, too often research conducted abroad involves collecting data and minimum or no engagement with local communities to communicate the broader scientific impacts. To address this deficiency, we worked with Ecuadorian school…

Plant awareness disparity (PAD, formerly plant blindness) is the tendency not to notice plants in one's environment, which leads to the perspective that plants are unimportant. In this paper, we explore how plants and animals are represented in introductory biology textbooks to determine if these texts are contributing to PAD in undergraduate…

There is an emphasis on survival-based selection in biology education that can allow students to neglect other important evolutionary components, such as sexual selection, reproduction, and inheritance. Student understanding of the role of reproduction in evolution is as important as student understanding of the role of survival. Limiting…

Case studies are valuable tools for instruction but are often limited to a single topic and a single class period. Courses such as evolution that synthesize multiple concepts around a common theme, however, can use a single case study type project that extends over the entire semester to develop and link core concepts. A central theme in…

Using the comparative approach, researchers draw inferences about the evolution of cognition. Psychologists have postulated several hypotheses to explain why certain species are cognitively more flexible than others, and these hypotheses assume that certain cognitive skills are linked together to create a generally "smart" species.…

We present a drawing discovery lab that crosscuts multiple disciplines in biology and links concepts in genetics and evolutionary thinking to enhance understanding of the genotype-to-phenotype transformation. These combined concepts are also linked to ecological frameworks in nature through the model of biological plasticity. Students and teachers…

Naturalists enrich our scientific understanding of biodiversity. However, just as countries have fallen behind on commitments to provide biodiversity conservation funding, so has the focus of life science stayed arm's length. The purpose of this article is to consider why biodiversity should be the center of life sciences education and how…

Given the importance of phylogenetic trees to understanding common ancestry and evolution, they are a necessary part of the undergraduate biology curriculum. However, a number of common misconceptions, such as reading across branch tips and understanding homoplasy, can pose difficulties in student understanding. Students also may take phylogenetic…

This paper presents an active learning approach that focuses on practical investigation of the ecosystem of tidal flats using 3D modeling and printing for biology students in order to enhance understanding of natural selection. The learning approach for the study followed a 5-step procedure: i) learning about 3D modeling and printing, ii)…

Whereas previous studies show that children are able to make meaning about evolutionary concepts within read-aloud contexts, little is known about how semiotic resources and interaction influence children's meaning making about evolution. This study investigates children's meaning making about evolutionary concepts during a modelling activity…

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…

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 paper gives an example of how to address the challenge of designing a learning progression that describes student thinking, with the necessary specificity to align instructional opportunities and assessment tools. We describe the Conceptual Underpinnings of Evolution project and the iterative process of developing a novel learning progression…

In this article, we present how educational resources for zoology designed by undergraduate students help to propose means of action for teaching diversity and animal evolution in basic education. We realised that activities of creation and analysis of educational resources, in the context of didactic planning, have the potential to approximate…