The Missing Link: An Inquiry Approach for Teaching All Students about Evolution

For too long, evolution has been denied its place in the science curriculum.  School policies driven by misunderstanding or fea regularly displace widely recognized principles of science.  But without understanding evolution, students--no matter what their religious beliefs--will never achieve the level of scientific literacy they need to make sense of even everyday practicalities like how human viruses work.

In The Missing Link, Lee Meadows has crafted an approach to teaching evolution that helps students understand its explanatory power whether they accept its principles or not.  All students are invited to engage in inquiry, where questions, evidence, and exploration supplant values-based debates over right and wrong answers.  Teachers will find the tools and resources they need to develop a unit on evolution including:

• an overview of inquiry-based science teaching
• outlines for lesson plans
• a plethora of internet resources.

An appendix also provides a refresher course for teachers who may want to sharpen their content knowledge of evolution. And a study guide makes this ideal for book study groups.

Bring The Missing Link to your teaching and keep the doors to science open for all your students.

Lee Meadows has taught high school science and now works as a science educator and reformer in the Schools of Education and Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The author of The Missing Link: An Inquiry Approach for Teaching All Students About Evolution, began his journey with the book while grappling with his own conflict between evolution and faith. He brings both personal insight and years of instructional experience to the challenge of teaching students to be curious rather than fearful. Lee