Teaching Evolution and Natural Selection

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Teaching Evolution andNatural Selection

• by
• Answering Questions First and
• Placing Conclusions in Scientific Context
• Mike Phillips
• Geology Professor
• Illinois Valley Community College

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Why Do Myths Misrepresentations Persist?

• It is often easier to reject the seemingly
  complex science rather than accommodate the
  conclusions.
• conflict with personal philosophy
• misunderstanding of the science
• disagreement with the implications
• the perceived cost of acceptance outweighs and
  understood benefits

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Barriers to New Ideas

• information consistent with a preferred
  conclusion is examined less critically than
  information inconsistent with a preferred
  conclusion, and consequently, less information is
  required to reach the former than the latter.
• Ditto Lopez, 1992, Motivated Skepticism Use of
  Differential Decision Criteria for Preferred and
  Nonpreferred Conclusions, Journal of Personality
  and Social Psychology, Vol. 63, No. 4, 568-584

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Barriers to New Ideas

• across age groups, scientific reasoning was
  used to reject evidence that contradicted prior
  beliefs relatively cursory reasoning was used to
  accept belief-consistent evidence.
• Biased reasoning was more common among
  middle-aged and older adults than among young
  adults.
• Klaczynski Robinson, 2000, Personal Theories,
  Intellectual Ability, and Epistemological
  Beliefs Adult Age Differences in Everyday
  Reasoning Biases, Psychology and Aging, Vol. 15,
  No. 3. 400-416

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Barriers to New Ideas

• for incongruent evidenceCognitive vigilance
  and accuracy motivation increase, evidence
  representations are focused on logical coherence,
  and sophisticated reasoning abilities are
  activated.
• A search for that reasoning strategy most likely
  to yield satisfactory results (i.e., rejection of
  the unfavorable evidence) then ensues. If no such
  strategy is found, processing reverts backand
  developmentally primitive strategies are used to
  reject the evidence.
• Klaczynski Robinson, 2000

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Barriers to New Ideas

• when confronted with an incompatible argument
  to evaluate, people will engage in a deliberative
  search of memory in an attempt to retrieve
  material for use in refuting the position
  advocated.
• Because most of the retrieved material will be
  refutational in nature, there will be a bias to
  judge the argument as weak.
• Edwards Smith, 1996, A Disconfirmation Bias in
  the Evaluation of Arguments, Journal of
  Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 71, No.
  1, p.5-2

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Barriers to New Ideas

• ideological subgroups failed to update their
  beliefs when presented with corrective
  information that runs counter to their
  predispositions. Indeed, in several
  casescorrections actually strengthened
  misperceptions among the most strongly committed
  subjects.
• Nyhan Reifler, 2010, When Corrections Fail The
  Persistence of Political Misperceptions,
  Political Behavior, Vol. 32, No. 2, p. 303-330

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Implications for Presenting New Ideas

• The brain will do its best to defend against new
  ideas that are incompatible with firmly held
  beliefs.
• When conclusions are presented first, as a
  structural frame to provide context for the data,
  personal bias may cause a rejection of subsequent
  supporting information.

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Is There Any Hope?

• There is considerable evidence that people are
  more likely to arrive at conclusions that they
  want to arrive at, but their ability to do so is
  constrained by their ability to construct
  seemingly reasonable justifications for these
  conclusions.
• Kunda, 1990, The Case for Motivated Reasoning,
  Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 108, No. 3, 480-498

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Hope

• when confronted with a compatible argument,
  people will allocate fewer processing resources
  to its scrutiny and will be more inclined to
  accept the argument at face value or judge it to
  be strong, or both.
• Edwards Smith, 1996

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Hope

• If evidence is theory congruent Cognitive
  vigilance, accuracy motivation, and efforts to
  prevent memory interference are low the data are
  assimilated into theory and arguments for
  evidence acceptance are often superficial.
• Klaczynski Robinson, 2000

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Hope

• For analytically oriented individuals, the
  outcome of reviewing theory-relevant evidence
  depends on the quality of the evidence and may
  lead to theory maintenance or theory revision.
• Klaczynski Robinson, 2000

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What to Do?

• Avoid triggering
• Disconfirmation bias
• Backfire effect

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What to Do?

• Identify firmly held beliefs triggers
• Present congruent information as a foundation
• Frame arguments as compatible with beliefs

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Application

• Collect Questions
• Provide Historical Context
• Present Core Evidence
• focus on the congruent compatible
• Build up to the Conclusion

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Collect Questions

• Identify the audience
• People saving questions
• Have trouble focusing
• Might maintain a hostile mood
• Discuss myths and misperceptions
• Audience can begin to discard
• Not straw men

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Collect Questions

• Provide cards to arriving audience
• Prompt for positive negative questions
• Sort quickly and respond to some
• Use the remainder to frame the presentation
• Set a positive, respectful tone

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Dealing With The Cards

• Use outline to sort
• Build a history
• Develop categories
• Sort quickly
• Identify key concepts
• The first time is the worst

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Dealing With The Cards

• Cards/questions common responses
• monkey-human relationship
• variety of religious views
• naturalism
• the strongest survive

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Provide Historical Context

• People respond to stories
• People relate to struggle
• Provides a frame of reference
• Presents many myths misperceptions as valid but
  out-of-date
• Scientists are protagonists

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Provide Historical Context

• Tell the story
• Describe the original understanding
• Set up the problem(s)
• Stop at key waypoints
• Highlight evidence that was surprising at the
  time
• Build up to the conclusion

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Present First Evidence First

• Models good science
• Builds the historical chain
• The early evidence convinced the early skeptics
• Presenting conclusions first
• appears to be a priori
• triggers cognitive barriers
• removes context

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Example Unit Structure

• Historical Geology
• Collect Questions
• Story of Darwin as a Frame
• The Evidence - Origin as a guide
• for evolution rocks, fossils, anatomy, genetics
• for natural selection selective breading,
  natural conditions, mutations, populations

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Historical Geology Intro

• Reading the rocks
• Reading the fossils
• Interpreting rock forming environments
• Relative dating
• Absolute dating
• History of the Earth
• Cladistic relationships of fossils

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Evolution Natural Selection Unit

• Collect Students Questions
• Story of Darwin Development of Theory
• Darwins education
• Voyage of the Beagle
• collection of fossils live organisms
• observation of global temporal diversity
• Collection of more data
• Publication of Origin

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Evidence for Evolution

• Rock Record
• Fossil Record
• Geographic Distribution of Life
• Anatomy Physiology
• Genetics
• Cladistic Analysis

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Organic Evolution Conclusions

• the characteristics of populations of living
  organisms have changed through time
• life has become more complex
• life has become more diverse
• all life is related
• this is accepted as a factual observation
• the interpretation of the relationships between
  organisms is being expanded refined

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Missing links!!!

• the link between two fossil species OR between
  a fossil species and a living species
• PRESERVATION AS A FOSSIL IS RARE!
• many links found (its just a matter of time
  and effort)
• however each gap filled creates two new gaps

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Question

• What is the mechanism that resulted in the
  evolution of life?

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Evidence for Natural Selection

• populations of organisms display a variety of
  characteristics
• genetics
• artificial selection domestic plants animals
• natural selection
• environmental stresses opportunities
• isolation of populations

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Conclusion

• The variety of conditions in the natural
  environment results in natural selection of
  populations which, in turn, is responsible for
  biological evolution.

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Randomness

• mutations are random
• evolution is not random
• natural selection is not random
• favorable mutations survive through reproduction

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Interesting Details

• Divergence Speciation
• Extinction
• Convergence
• Homology Vestigial Organs
• Coevolution Symbiogenisis
• Phyletic Gradualism Punctuated Equilibrium
• How did it start?
• Evolution has no end
• Nothing is too complex to investigate.

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Key Points

• Identify firmly held beliefs triggers
• Present congruent information as a foundation
• Frame arguments as compatible with beliefs

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Thank You!

• Mike Phillips
• Illinois Valley Community College
• mike_phillips_at_ivcc.edu
• http//www.ivcc.edu/phillips