title: Fostering 21st-Century Evolutionary Reasoning: Teaching Tree Thinking to Introductory Biology Students.
abstract: The ability to interpret and reason from Tree of Life (ToL) diagrams has become a vital component of science literacy in the 21st century. This article reports on the effectiveness of a research-based curriculum, including an instructional booklet, laboratory, and lectures, to teach the fundamentals of such tree thinking in an introductory biology class for science majors. We present the results of a study involving 117 undergraduates who received either our new research-based tree-thinking curriculum or business-as-usual instruction. We found greater gains in tree-thinking abilities for the experimental instruction group than for the business-as-usual group, as measured by performance on our novel assessment instrument. This was a medium size effect. These gains were observed on an unannounced test that was administered ∼5-6 weeks after the primary instruction in tree thinking. The nature of students' postinstruction difficulties with tree thinking suggests that the critical underlying concept for acquiring expert-level competence in this area is understanding that any specific phylogenetic tree is a subset of the complete, unimaginably large ToL.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Human Development, Peabody College, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37203-5721 Laura.Novick@vanderbilt.edu.
authors.forename: Laura R
authors.initials: LR
authors.lastname: Novick
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC 28723.
authors.forename: Kefyn M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Catley
mesh_terms: D005075:Biological Evolution; D001695:Biology / Q000193:education*; D003479:Curriculum; D004521:Educational Measurement; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010802:Phylogeny; D012106:Research; D013334:Students; D013663:Teaching; D013850:Thinking