With numerous opportunities for professional development, teachers are inundated with a variety of workshop styles to choose from. In the development of the Life Through Time workshop, we have made every attempt to consider recent research that outlines the most effective methodologies in professional development implementation including consideration of existing conceptions, teacher motivation, and highly reflective engagement. The intention of this long-term professional development is to motivate teachers to implement changes in the delivery of content related to evolution in the science classroom. After reviewing the strategies implemented in this professional development opportunity, practices that were used can be extended to future teacher training programs. / text

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Pennsylvania State University, 2007. / Mode of access: World Wide Web.

The purpose of this research was to determine the condition of evolution education in American parochial schools and the effect of evolution education on students' attitudes toward science. Data were gathered using Eraser's Test of Science Related Attitudes (TOSRA) and Bilica's Teaching Evolutionary Topics Survey (TETS). The research participants consisted of 60.3% of biology teachers currently teaching in Lutheran high schools in the United States, and 479 Lutheran high school biology students grades 9-12 in California, Nevada, and Arizona. In the first attitudinal study done specifically on parochial students, statistical analysis confirmed the reliability and validity of the TOSRA instrument for parochial school students. In a quasi-experimental design, analysis revealed that student science attitudes do change as a result of participating in a unit on evolution in the first year biology classes of secondary parochial schools. The emphasis placed by teachers on particular evolutionary topics was also analysed. It was found that all Lutheran high school biology teachers present evolution to some extent although not all topics are emphasized equally. The results also demonstrate that parochial school teachers have nearly the same emphasis placed on evolution as do public school teachers.

abstract: In 1997, developmental biologist Michael Richardson compared his research team's embryo photographs to Ernst Haeckel's 1874 embryo drawings and called Haeckel's work noncredible.Science soon published <&ldquo;>Haeckel's Embryos: Fraud Rediscovered,<&rdquo;> and Richardson's comments further reinvigorated criticism of Haeckel by others with articles in The American Biology Teacher, <&ldquo;>Haeckel's Embryos and Evolution: Setting the Record Straight <&rdquo;> and the New York Times, <&ldquo;>Biology Text Illustrations more Fiction than Fact.<&rdquo;> Meanwhile, others emphatically stated that the goal of comparative embryology was not to resurrect Haeckel's work. At the center of the controversy was Haeckel's no-longer-accepted idea of recapitulation. Haeckel believed that the development of an embryo revealed the adult stages of the organism's ancestors. Haeckel represented this idea with drawings of vertebrate embryos at similar developmental stages. This is Haeckel's embryo grid, the most common of all illustrations in biology textbooks. Yet, Haeckel's embryo grids are much more complex than any textbook explanation. I examined 240 high school biology textbooks, from 1907 to 2010, for embryo grids. I coded and categorized the grids according to accompanying discussion of (a) embryonic similarities (b) recapitulation, (c) common ancestors, and (d) evolution. The textbooks show changing narratives. Embryo grids gained prominence in the 1940s, and the trend continued until criticisms of Haeckel reemerged in the late 1990s, resulting in (a) grids with fewer organisms and developmental stages or (b) no grid at all. Discussion about embryos and evolution dropped significantly. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ed.D. Biology 2014

abstract: In the United States, there is a national agenda to increase the number of qualified science, technology, engineering, and maths (STEM) professionals and a movement to promote science literacy among the general public. This project explores the association between formal human evolutionary biology education (HEB) and high school science class enrollment, academic achievement, interest in a STEM degree program, motivation to pursue a STEM career, and socioscientific decision&ndash;making for a sample of students enrolled full&ndash;time at Arizona State University. Given a lack of a priori knowledge of these relationships, the Grounded Theory Method was used and was the foundation for a mixed&ndash;methods analysis involving qualitative and quantitative data from one&ndash;on&ndash;one interviews, focus groups, questionnaires, and an online survey. Theory development and hypothesis generation were based on data from 44 students. The survey instrument, developed to test the hypotheses, was completed by 486 undergraduates, age 18&ndash;22, who graduated from U.S. public high schools. The results showed that higher exposure to HEB was correlated with greater high school science class enrollment, particularly for advanced biological science classes, and that, for some students, HEB exposure may have influenced their enrollment, because the students found the content interesting and relevant. The results also suggested that students with higher K&ndash;12 HEB exposure felt more prepared for undergraduate science coursework. There was a positive correlation between HEB exposure and interest in a STEM degree and an indirect relationship between higher HEB exposure and motivation to pursue a STEM career. Regarding a number of socioscientific issues, including but not limited to climate change, homosexuality, and stem cell research, students' behaviors and decision&ndash;making more closely reflected a scientific viewpoint&mdash;or less&ndash;closely aligned to a religion&ndash;based perspective&mdash;when students had greater HEB exposure, but this was sometimes contingent on students' lifetime exposure to religious doctrine and acceptance of general evolution or human evolution. This study has implications for K&ndash;12 and higher education and justifies a paradigm shift in evolution education research, such that more emphasis is placed on students' interests, perceived preparation for continued learning, professional goals and potential contributions to society rather than just their knowledge and acceptance. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Anthropology 2014

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