A missing link in teaching?
Polls consistently indicate that approximately one-half of Americans and a significant number of Canadians reject the scientific validity of evolutionary theory. Moreover, the opposition to teaching the fundamentals of evolution is growing stronger. The National Academy of Sciences (U.S.A.) feels this situation could eventually hamper the advancement of science and technology as students take their places as leaders of future generations. Numerous other prominent and highly respected scientific organizations and scholars have echoed these concerns.
Enter Professor Brian Alters, Science Education Specialist in the Faculty of Education at Ï㽶ÊÓƵ, and Visiting Scholar at the Philosophy of Education Research Center at Harvard University. His area of research involves investigating why students harbour so many misconceptions concerning evolution and what can be done to improve the teaching of the subject. "It is not a simple matter", he explains, "because the concept of evolution is highly counterintuitive for most students and this subject has significant religious overtones for many." In addition, there exist some well-funded fundamentalist religious organizations that actively oppose the teaching of evolution because of their literal reading of the book of Genesis. Consequently, Dr Alters has become a target of many who hope that he will fail in his quest to improve teaching of evolution theory. This does not deter him; rather he finds the often-synergistic effect of evolutionary misconceptions, religious interpretation, and political action involvement quite stimulating (he used to work as a police officer in Southern California).
One of his previous studies included over 1200 freshmen from colleges and universities across the United States. Recently, he has received funds to investigate francophone and anglophone cultural differences in Quebec that may affect evolution teaching and learning. Also, he has just formed an interdisciplinary, inter-university group of professors who will combine their abilities on the issue of evolution education research. The membership is made up of experts in biological evolution, educational psychology, evolution education, geology, molecular biology, paleontology, philosophy of science, philosophy of education, and science education.
With the ultimate goal of improving scientific literacy for all, the research aims at better understanding the factors involved in learning about evolution and further improving, at every educational level, the teaching and learning of this fundamental concept of all life sciences. The results of AltersÂ’ research have been published in many journals and were recently discussed in Scientific American and The New York Times. Next year he will have a book published on the topic.
NOTE
Dr Alters will introduce U.S. expert Eugenie Scott tomorrow, Oct. 6 at 8 p.m. as the first speaker in McGillÂ’s three-part Millennium Lecture series, "Ape or Angel."
