Any conversation about increasing pre-med requirements to include evolution has implications for undergraduate biology education (e.g., National Research Council 2003a). However, recent national reports have already raised questions about the current model of biology education (summarized in Labov et al. 2010). Efforts to improve undergraduate education in STEM disciplines are not new. Since at least the launch of Sputnik in 1957, numerous reports have called for fundamental changes to be made in high school and undergraduate science courses to make them more accessible to a broader spectrum of students and of greater interest to all students. Until recently, there has been little evidence for fundamental and meaningful changes to life sciences education in response to those publications.
However, in 2009–2011, a series of publications, conferences, and events suggested that more people and organizations in the life sciences are recognizing that biology education for both life sciences majors and those who will pursue other career paths is problematic because teaching methods are outdated, often ineffective, and fail to show students the excitement of modern, cutting-edge science (Jurkowski et al. 2007; National Research Council 2000, 2003b, 2011b). Many of our students are leaving STEM for these reasons. Indeed, some 60% of students who enter college indicating that they plan to pursue a major in one of the sciences switch to some field of study after their first year. When those who leave are asked why, a very large proportion of them indicate that their instruction is lackluster, the topics in their courses are of little interest, and instruction and assessments reinforced the idea that science is a corpus of facts to be memorized and displayed on examinations. And the evidence suggests that the academic credentials of those students who opt out of science are not statistically different up to that point from students who continue to pursue additional study in the sciences (e.g., Seymour and Hewitt 1997; Bettinger 2010). The cost to STEM in wasted human resources is far too large at a time when science and technology are increasingly pervasive in all aspects of our society and economy.
There also is greater recognition that research in the life sciences is becoming increasingly more interdisciplinary and interconnected; biology education also must change to acknowledge and adapt to these new realities and opportunities (National Research Council 2009). In addition, major public and private funding organizations (e.g., National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Howard Hughes Medical Institute) are emphasizing more interdisciplinary and interconnected approaches and themes for undergraduate education in the life sciences.
The importance of evolution in biology has been prominently featured in several recent reports and papers:
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“A NewBiology for the 21st Century” by a committee under the aegis of the National Research Council’s (NRC) Board on Life Sciences (National Research Council 2009). The report proposes a bold new integrated research agenda and builds on an earlier report of the National Research Council (2003a) with important implications for the future undergraduate and K-12 science education. The authoring committee stressed the importance of evolution to all of biology and hence the importance for students to recognize that understanding evolution can allow students to understand concepts such as the unity of life.
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Scientific Foundations for Future Physicians, published jointly in 2009 by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Association of American Medical Colleges. This report calls for a change in undergraduate science education away from a system based on courses to one based on “competencies.” According to the committee, “A competency-based approach will give both learners and educators more flexibility in the premedical curriculum and allow the development of more interdisciplinary and integrative courses that maintain scientific rigor, while providing a broad education.” (Executive Summary, p. 1)Footnote 2
Evolutionary concepts are very much a component of this vision for premedical and medical education.
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Competency M3, Learning Objective 1: Describe the functional elements in the human genome, their evolutionary origins, their interactions, and the consequences of genetic and epigenetic changes on adaptation and health. (p. 12)
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Competency E8: Demonstrate an understanding of how the organizing principle of evolution by natural selection explains the diversity of life on earth. (p. 35)
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Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: This report was based on a series of conversations held across the U.S. over two years and a summit in Washington, DC in July 2009 that was organized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science with support from the National Science Foundation. The summit brought together more than 500 people to consider future pathways for undergraduate education in the life sciences (Woodin et al 2009; Mervis 2009a).Footnote 3 A formal report from the summit was released earlier this year (American Association for the Advancement of Science 2011). Similar to the College Board’s four Big Ideas, Vision and Change stresses five “Core Concepts” in biology. Evolution is the first of these Core Concepts.
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Core Concept 1 (Evolution): The diversity of life evolved over time by processes of mutation, selection, and genetic change. (p. 12) The importance of evolution is also woven into other Core Concepts. For example:
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Core Concept 2 (Structure and Function): Fundamental structural units and molecular and cellular processes are conserved through evolution and yield the extraordinary diversity of biological systems seen today. (p.12)
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Earlier this year, the College Board released a set of frameworks for Advanced Placement (AP) Biology that reflects a multi-year restructuring of this course in science for high school students (College Board 2011). This restructuring closely follows the recommendations of a report from the National Research Council (2002) and calls for teaching fewer concepts in greater depth. Restructuring also requires developing and implementing means to measure students’ level of conceptual understanding (Mervis 2009b; Woodin et al. 2009). The framework for biology, as in all of the other AP science courses that are undergoing revision in response to the NRC report, articulates several “Big Ideas” that undergird the discipline. In biology, evolution is the first of four Big Ideas: The process of evolution drives the diversity and unity of life. (p. 4)
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A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Cross-Cutting Concepts, and Core Ideas: This report was released in July 2011 by the NRC’s Board on Science Education. This document is designed to serve as a guide to the production of new science education standards over the next 18 months, replacing the Benchmarks for Science Literacy published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1993 and the NRC’s National Science Education Standards that were published in 1996. As with the aforementioned documents, the authors of this new framework view evolution as one of the organizing theme of the life sciences, and they provide a set of guidelines for the production of new K-12 standards that would use the multiple concepts of evolution as a theme throughout the pre-college years. If the still-to-be-produced science standards are viewed as common core standards by the states (some 46 states have agreed to date to adopt common core standards in language arts and mathematics),Footnote 4 then the teaching of evolution could become a much more prominent component of science education in the nation’s schools for very large numbers of students over the coming decade. The key challenge will be to find ways to engage these students in the study of evolution. As noted in the next section, using approaches and examples that students find relevant to them, their families, and communities may help many of them to appreciate science more deeply. Medical evolution could provide that lens.
Thus, the life sciences and science education communities have focused attention on where biological research is likely to progress over the next several decades and how education in the life sciences might keep pace with this rethinking of research priorities and progress (Labov et al. 2010). Using evolutionary medicine as a tool for teaching basic evolutionary biology principles has the potential to address the recommendations of these reports and to engage pre-meds as well as many other students, both future life sciences majors and those who elect to pursue other career paths, in learning about evolution. And, by learning to view evolution as the connection to other parts of the life sciences, students may learn biology more deeply and effectively.
Evidence from the cognitive and learning sciences as well as discipline-based education research indicate that students learn most effectively and retain content and concepts in science longer when they see the relevance of a topic to their own lives or that of their community and when the topic is inherently interesting and engaging to them. (Summarized in National Research Council 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007; Eshel 2007; Handelsman et al. 2005). Given the interest and enthusiasm of the public for topics and issues around cutting-edge science (see also next section), framing courses in the life sciences around such issues and using them to impart content, concepts, and skills could result in far greater engagement by a broader spectrum of students who are enrolled in courses the life sciences (e.g., Jurkowski et al. 2007; Labov and Huddleston 2008). The relevance of evolutionary medicine topics to premedical students could serve as an important gateway to engaging these students in more general topics of evolution as well as demonstrating the connections among what too often seem to be disparate topics as they are currently taught in many survey biology courses. Other authors in this special issue of Evolution: Education and Outreach provide more specifics about the concepts, approaches, challenges, and opportunities for engaging students in science by framing science courses around the wonderfully interesting questions posed by evolutionary medicine.