Biological Evolution

High School | Formative Assessment Probe

Biological Evolution

By Page Keeley

Uncovering Student Ideas in Science, Volume 4: 25 New Formative Assessment Probes

This is the new updated edition of the first book in the bestselling Uncovering Student Ideas in Science series. Like the first edition of volume 1, this book helps pinpoint what your students know (or think they know) so you can monitor their learning and adjust your teaching accordingly. Loaded with classroom-friendly features you can use immediately, the book includes 25 “probes”—brief, easily administered formative assessments designed to understand your students’ thinking about 60 core science concepts.

Access this probe as a Google form: English

Download this probe as an editable PDF: English

Purpose

The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about biological evolution. The probe is designed to find out if students distinguish the theory of biological evolution from ideas about the origin of life and the mechanism for biological evolution.

Type of Probe

Friendly Talk

Related Concepts

biological evolution, natural selection, origin of life

Explanation

The best answer is Cameron’s: “I think it mainly explains how life changed after it started.” It explains that living things share common ancestors. Scientists seek to understand how life started, but this aspect of biology is not the central focus of the theory of biological evolution. The origin of life is associated with chemical evolution. The study of chemical evolution yields insight into the processes that lead to the generation of the chemical materials essential for the development of life. Regardless of how scientists think life on Earth started, we do know that after life originated it branched and diversified. Natural selection is part of the theory of biological evolution. It is a mechanism that drives evolutionary change in organisms. The theory of biological evolution focuses on explaining life’s diversity, and scientists continue to study the relatedness among organisms and how life diversified.

Curricular and Instructional Considerations

Elementary Students

In the elementary grades, the focus is on building a knowledge base about biological diversity to build a foundation for later understanding of the concept of biological evolution. Students learn about life-forms that no longer exist and compare their similarities to present-day organisms. They also examine features of organisms that help the organisms survive in their environments. They examine visible anatomical similarities that help them begin to build evidence for similarities within the diversity of life.

Middle School Students

In middle school, students expand the idea of similarity among seemingly diverse organisms by examining similarities in cells, tissues, and organs as well as similarities in patterns of development and chemical processes such as photosynthesis. This contributes further to building an evidence base for relatedness within the vast diversity of organisms on Earth.

Furthermore, students build a deeper understanding of fossil evidence and Earth’s geologic history, solidifying the notion of evolutionary change. They develop an understanding of how successful traits allow individuals to survive and reproduce as well as the effect of environmental changes on organisms and species. Understanding these ideas lays a foundation for understanding the formal concepts of adaptation and natural selection. The formal terminology, biological evolution and natural selection, is introduced in middle school after students have developed a beginning conceptual understanding of these concepts.

High School Students

Biological evolution is the central theme of modern biology. The foundational ideas and evidence base developed in K–8 can now converge into developing a formal understanding of biological evolution and its mechanism, natural selection. Because of students’ readiness to examine molecular evidence and other complexities, combined with their increased skills in examining arguments, high school is the time to develop a clear understanding of biological evolution. In middle school, the emphasis was on selection of individuals with advantageous traits. In high school, the emphasis shifts to include the changing proportions of traits that can result in species changes. Historical perspectives, including Charles Darwin’s contribution, provide an opportunity to understand how careful observations lead to solving some of the great puzzles of science.

Administering the Probe

This probe is most appropriate for use at the high school level, although it can be used at the middle school level to ascertain students’ preexisting ideas about biological evolution that they may have encountered through the media or other means. Make sure students understand that the probe is focused on biological evolution, not evolution in general.

K–4 The Characteristics of Organisms

Organisms can survive only in environments in which their needs can be met.
Each plant or animal has different structures that serve different functions in growth, survival, and reproduction.

K–4 Organisms and Their Environments

When the environment changes, some plants and animals survive and reproduce, and others die or move to new locations.

K–4 Properties of Earth Materials

Fossils provide evidence about the plants and animals that lived long ago and the nature of the environment at that time.

5–8 Diversity and Adaptations of Organisms

Biological evolution accounts for the diversity of species developed through gradual processes over many generations. Species acquire many of their unique characteristics through biological adaptation, which involves the selection of naturally occurring variations in populations.*
Millions of species of animals, plants, and microorganisms are alive today. Although different species might look dissimilar, the unity among organisms becomes apparent from an analysis of internal structures, the similarity of their chemical processes, and the evidence of common ancestry.

9–12 Biological Evolution

Species evolve over time. Evolution is the consequence of the interactions of (1) the potential for a species to increase its numbers, (2) the genetic variability of offspring due to mutation and recombination of genes, (3) a finite supply of the resources required for life, and (4) the ensuing selection by the environment of those offspring better able to survive and leave offspring.*
The great diversity of organisms is the result of more than 3.5 billion years of evolution that has filled every available niche with life-forms.*

*Indicates a strong match between the ideas elicited by the probe and a national standard’s learning goal.

Note: Benchmarks revised in 2008 are indicated by (R). New benchmarks added in 2008 are indicated by (N).

K–2 Evolution of Life

Some kinds of organisms that once lived on Earth have completely disappeared, although they were something like other organisms that are alive today.

3–5 Evolution of Life

Individuals of the same kind differ in their characteristics, and sometimes the differences give individuals an advantage in surviving and reproducing.
Fossils can be compared with one another and with living organisms according to their similarities and differences. Some organisms that lived long ago are similar to existing organisms, but some are quite different.

6–8 Evolution of Life

Small differences between parents and offspring can accumulate (through selective breeding) in successive generations so that descendants are very different from their ancestors.
Individual organisms with certain traits are more likely than others to survive and have offspring.
Changes in environmental conditions can affect the survival of individual organisms and entire species.

9–12 Evolution of Life

The basic idea of biological evolution is that the Earth’s present-day species are descended from earlier, distinctly different species. (R)*
Natural selection provides the following mechanism for evolution: Some variation in heritable characteristics exists within every species; some of these characteristics give individuals an advantage over others in surviving and reproducing; and the advantaged offspring, in turn, are more likely than others to survive and reproduce. As a result, the proportion of individuals that have advantageous characteristics will increase. (R)
Life on Earth is thought to have begun as simple, one-celled organisms about four billion years ago. Once cells with nuclei developed about one billion years ago, increasingly complex multicellular organisms evolved.
Modern ideas about evolution and heredity provide a scientific explanation for the history of life on Earth as depicted in the fossil record and in the similarities evident within the diversity of existing organisms.*

*Indicates a strong match between the ideas elicited by the probe and a national standard’s learning goal.

Related Research

Many people believe that evolution is a theory about the origin of life (University of California Museum of Paleontology 2006).
Research suggests that students’ understanding of evolution is related to their understanding of the nature of science and their general reasoning abilities (AAAS 1993).

Related NSTA Resources

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). 2001. Atlas of science literacy. Vol. 1. (See “Biological Evolution” map, pp. 80–81.) Washington, DC: AAAS.

Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS). 2005. The nature of science and the study of biological evolution. Colorado Springs, CO: BSCS.

Bybee, R., ed. 2004. Evolution in perspective: The science teacher’s compendium. Arlington, VA: NSTA Press.

Diamond, J., C. Zimmer, E. M. Evans, L. Allison, and S. Disbrow, eds. 2006. Virus and the whale: Exploring evolution in creatures large and small. Arlington, VA: NSTA Press.

Kampourakis, K. 2006. The finche’s beak: Introducing evolutionary concepts. Science Scope (Mar.): 14–17.

McComas, W. 2008. Investigating evolutionary biology in the laboratory. Dubuque, IO: Kendall Hunt.

National Academy of Sciences. 2008. Science, evolution, and creationism. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

Scotchmoor, J., and A. Janulaw. 2005. Understanding evolution. The Science Teacher (Dec.): 28–29.

Suggestions for Instruction and Assessment

The word evolution is used in many ways in science, including in the terms biological evolution, chemical evolution, stellar evolution, evolution of the Earth system, and evolution of the universe. Explicitly develop the precise meaning of biological evolution so that students distinguish it from other types of change.
Be aware that some students confuse natural selection with biological evolution. Explicitly develop the notion that natural selection is the mechanism for biological evolution.
If students confuse the origin of life with biological evolution, use Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species to compare and contrast the “two origins” by pointing out that “origin of life” deals with the chemical circumstances that produced the first self-replicating molecules that led to the beginning of life, whereas On the Origin of Species was a pivotal work that explained species change over time (biological evolution) through natural selection.
NSTA maintains an extensive website for teaching resources associated with evolution. Go to: www.nsta.org/publications/ evolution.aspx.

References

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). 1993. Benchmarks for science literacy. New York: Oxford University Press.

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). 2008. Benchmarks for science literacy online. www.project2061.org/publications/ bsl/online

Keeley, P. 2005. Science curriculum topic study: Bridging the gap between standards and practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

National Research Council (NRC). 1996. National science education standards. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

University of California Museum of Paleontology. 2006. Understanding evolution. http://evolution. berkeley.edu