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…

The teaching of evolution in American high schools has long been a source of controversy. The past decade has seen an important shift in the rhetoric of anti-evolutionists, toward arguments of a strongly mathematical character. These mathematical arguments, while different in their specifics, follow the same general program and rely on the same…

Science textbooks and classes mostly emphasize what are considered by today's standards the "right" or "correct" interpretations of particular phenomena or processes. When "incorrect" ideas of the past are mentioned at all, it is simply to point out their errors, with little attention as to why the ideas were put…

Mendel is an icon in the history of genetics and part of our common culture and modern biology instruction. The aim of this paper is to summarize the place of Mendel in the modern biology classroom. In the present article we will identify key issues that make Mendel relevant in the classroom today. First, we recount some of the historical…

This is the second of two articles that address recent scholarship about teaching and learning about evolution. This second review seeks to summarize this state of affairs and address the implications of this work for the classroom by addressing four basic questions: (1) What is evolution?/What components of the theory are important at the…

This article examines what science education might be able to learn from phenomenological religious education's attempts to teach classes where students hold a plurality of religious beliefs. Recent statements as to how best to accomplish the central pedagogical concept of "learning from religion" as a vehicle for human transformation are…

Although evolution has long been considered a controversial issue, little effort has been made to ensure that instructional approaches address the controversial nature of the issue. A framework for understanding the nature of controversy and some defining characteristics of controversial issues are provided. In light of this framework evolution is…

The issue whether creationist accounts of the origins of life should be taught in science education alongside or even instead Darwin's theory of evolution is controversial in many countries. In 2002 there was a controversy around teaching creationism in science classes at a secondary school in England. The research presented in this paper uses…

A variety of different arguments have been offered for teaching "both sides" of the evolution/ID debate in public schools. This article reviews five of the most common types of arguments advanced by proponents of Intelligent Design and demonstrates how and why they are founded on confusion and misunderstanding. It argues on behalf of teaching…

In this paper we present a schematic overview of the central concepts in evolutionary theory, setting them off against the background of widespread misconceptions about them. Our aim is to provide high school teachers with (1) an overview of those particular concepts that they can expect students to have difficulties with, (2) a comparison of…

Even though in the early years of the Republic of Turkey Darwin's theory of evolution was treated as a scientific theory and taught fairly in schools, despite all the substantial evidence accumulated supporting the theory of evolution since then, Darwin and his ideas today have been scorned by curriculum and education policy makers. Furthermore,…

Science education controversies typically prove more intractable than those in scientific research because they involve a wider range of considerations (e.g., epistemic, social, ethical, political, and religious). How can educators acknowledge central issues in a controversy (such as evolution)? How can such problems be addressed in a way that is…

Debates concerning how the issue of human life's origins should be handled within the confines of American public schools still continue. In order to mitigate the impact that evolution has on students, some school boards and state legislatures have recommended that stickers voicing a disclaimer about evolution be placed in biology textbooks. Even…