Evolution Education Re-considered : Understanding What Works

This collection presents research-based interventions using existing knowledge to produce new pedagogies to teach evolution to learners more successfully, whether in schools or elsewhere. ‘Success’ here is measured as cognitive gains, as acceptance of evolution or an increased desire to continue to learn about it. Aside from introductory and concluding chapters by the editors, each chapter consists of a research-based intervention intended to enable evolution to be taught successfully; all these interventions have been researched and evaluated by the chapters’ authors and the findings are presented along with discussions of the implications. The result is an important compendium of studies from around the word conducted both inside and outside of school. The volume is unique and provides an essential reference point and platform for future work for the foreseeable future. 

UTE HARMS is Director at the Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education (IPN), Full Professor for Biology Education at the University of Kiel (Germany) since 2007, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology (Great Britain). She owns a PhD in Cell Biology and has worked as a high school teacher for several years. In 2000 she got her first Professorship for Biology Education at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich (Germany). From 2006 to 2007 she held a chair in Biology Education at the University of Bremen. Her main research interests are conceptual learning in biology and in science focusing on evolution and energy, biology teacher education, biology related competitions and transfer of contemporary topics in the Life Sciences to the public.

Michael Reiss is Professor of Science Education at UCL Institute of Education, University College London, Visiting Professor at the Universities of York and Kiel and the Royal Veterinary College, Honorary Fellow of the British Science Association, Docent at the University of Helsinki and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. After undertaking a PhD and post-doctoral research in evolutionary biology and population genetics, he trained to be a science teacher and taught in schools for five years before returning to higher education. The former Director of Education at the Royal Society, his academic interests are in science education, bioethics and sex education and he has published widely on issues to do with creationism in schools.