Nelson points out that much of the blame for the evolution/creation controversy stems from poor teaching of evolution in the high schools. The two most obvious failed strategies are:
TEACH THE SCIENCE AND IGNORE STUDENTS’ PRIOR BELIEFS
This is the most common approach to teaching evolution. Students are exposed to the factual material on evolution from a strictly scientific perspective. The fact that most students may have conflicting religious beliefs is not taken into consideration and no time is spent discussing possible conflicts between religion and science. Nelson points out that this strategy is ineffective at getting students to change their minds about evolution. He adds, "However, when students make direct comparisons of their naïve misconceptions with scientifically better-founded schemes, change is frequent. These approaches can lead to greater acceptance of evolution (e.g., Ingram & Nelson, 2005; Scharmann, 2005; Scharmann et al., 2005; Verhey, 2005; Wilson, 2005, 2007; Alters, 2005 reviews earlier work). Thus, naïve views predominate publicly with regard to evolution, perhaps even more than elsewhere in science, at least partly as a predictable consequence of post-secondary pedagogical choices that ignore naïve views and are otherwise sub-optimal."
He's saying that it's better to confront creationism and intelligent design than to ignore it.
AVOIDING AN EVEN WORSE APPROACH: TWO EQUAL MODELSNelson advocates the teaching of creationism and intelligent design in school, but not as science. Instead, they should be used as examples of what science is not. It would be an excellent way of confronting the misconceptions of students head-on to show them why these false ideas are wrong. He echoes a similar call by Bruce Alberts writing in Cell [A Wakeup Call for Science Faculty].
One alternative is to teach both evolution creationism but to treat them as equivalent theories of origins. This is not appropriate.
For all those who teach college biology, the current challenge posed by the intelligent design movement presents an ideal “teachable moment.” I believe that intelligent design should be taught in college science classes but not as the alternative to Darwinism that its advocates demand. It is through the careful analysis of why intelligent design is not science that students can perhaps best come to appreciate the nature of science itself.Alberts is talking about college courses but Nelson wants to use these "teachable moments" in high school. He suggests three possible strategies.
- Discuss common misconceptions, like the second law of thermodynamics or missing links, without explicitly mentioning creationism or religion.
- Make the nature of science a central theme and use evolution as the prime example of how science is supposed to be done. Countering creationist claims would be used as examples of non-scientific arguments.
- Discuss creationism and intelligent design directly in order to make it clear that creationist arguments fail when considered from a scientific perspective.
I believe this is a general principle. It is AFAIU statistically known that many physics students may continue to have a pre-Newtonian ("it moves if it is pushed") or cartoon physics ("it moves in straight lines") mechanics understanding unless confronted by actually comparing their presuppositions with what happens. Just explaining the mechanics and/or running the experiment doesn't cut it for all.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately my experiences centered around lab assistance, so I never had occasion to test this observation. I know how to analyze and fix erroneous experiments/builds or teach how to do the same, not erroneous minds.
The approach I have heard claimed works well in some blog comments is IIRC to start by explaining and demonstrating the scientific method and its history. And set it up so the teacher then can compare old (including religious) ideas with observation. Dunno if one needs to be confrontational with any specific religion as such, most religions have several different "creators" and/or "movers" for example. It would be simpler over all to chalk it up as "teaching 'the method'".
In short: Yes.
I agree with this. In school we were told that "we" (humans) and other animals evolved but were told no reason why evolution should have ever took place or how it took place.
ReplyDeleteIt was merely presented as a "here is an ape, then a not-quite ape, then us" and that was about it.
Hence I thought "ok, a scientist has to think that way, but I still don't believe it".
Hearing about "natural selection" and mutations was like putting on my eye glasses for the first time.
In my high school biology class, we had a "conscientious objector" who questioned our teacher about his one-sided approach to teaching evolution (he was teaching the science of evolution without any references to creationism or intelligent design).
ReplyDeleteIn an effort to make sure that everyone had an opportunity to present their views, the teacher proposed that we hold a debate during one of our subsequent classes, where anyone who wanted to could present their views on evolution and creationism, and then we would have a class discussion about it.
I showed up on the day of the debate ready to defend evolution. I don't remember exactly what I said, but I think I opened with an argument about how scientists see changes in the genetic composition of a population all the time in experiments carried out on fruit flies, and then I asked our conscientious objector how she would explain this occurance without evolution.
I had pages of notes all ready to go to refute whatever arguments the creationist side of the classroom could present, but when my classmate was given her chance to speak she just burst into tears and ran out of the class. It turned out that she was the only one who considered herself to be on the creationist side, so our debate ended then and there before it even began.
It was a thouroughly disappointing experience for me, both because I didn't really get a chance to engage in a debate for which I was well-prepared, and also because I felt guilty about making someone cry in the middle of class.
I have since realized that crying is a very common defense for those arguing in favour of creationism, but at the time I was totally unprepared for it, as was my teacher.