OpenEvo
What can we learn from children about human evolution, behavior, and sustainability? The development of social and cognitive abilities in the course of a lifetime can help us understand the causes of human behavior and the origins of our everyday experience.
What can we learn from our biologically close and distant relatives about human evolution, behavior, and sustainability? Comparing traits of humans and other species helps us understand the causes of our behaviors and the principles of cooperation and sustainability.
Cross-Species Comparisons Read More »
What can we learn from our ancestors about human evolution, behavior and sustainability? Exploring the characteristics of our ancestors, their living conditions, and the things they left behind, gives us clues about the causes of human behavior and the importance of cooperation in the history of our species.
The clarification of scientific concepts.
Scientific clarification Read More »
Exploring the potential to integrate interdicsiplinary approaches in evolutionary studies as a foundation for innovations in Education for Sustainable Development.
When people must share things, what does it mean to share fairly? Do all people around the world have the same idea of what is fair or unfair? Are humans born with a feeling about what is fair and unfair, or is it something we learn as we grow up? Scientists study how people from different cultures choose to share things in various situations, and whether people think different ways of sharing are fair or unfair. This article describes an experiment in which scientists studied whether children from different cultures have different ideas about what is fair. These studies are important for understanding how humans are similar and different from each other and from other animals, and they also help us understand how we can work to create a world that is considered fair by everyone.
We present a teaching tool, used widely in other parts of science and science education, yet perhaps underutilized in human evolution education—the causal map—as a novel direction for driving conceptual change in the classroom about the role of organism behavior and other factors in evolutionary change. We describe the scientific and conceptual basis for using such causal maps in human evolution education, as well as theoretical considerations for implementing the causal mapping tool in human evolution classrooms.
We provide a brief overview of Prosocial: Using Evolutionary Science to Build Productive, Equitable, and Collaborative Groups by Paul Atkins, David Sloan Wilson, and Steven Hayes. The book offers a range of promising content for evolution education, and yet also highlights core conceptual challenges in modern evolution science discourse that educators and researchers aiming to improve evolution education may find beneficial to strategically engage with as a scientific community. We discuss these challenges and opportunities with a view towards implications for evolution education research and practice.
Evolution education continues to struggle with a range of persistent challenges spanning aspects of conceptual understanding, acceptance, and perceived relevance of evolutionary theory by students in general education. This article argues that a gene-centered conceptualization of evolution may inherently limit the degree to which these challenges can be effectively addressed, and may even precisely contribute to and exacerbate these challenges.
Many evolutionary anthropologists view cooperation as core to the evolutionary success of our species. Concurrently, many sustainability scientists view cooperation as core to the future sustainable development of our species. When it comes to biology education, however, it is unclear how or if students are being engaged in these scientific perspectives. This article offers an overview of scientific perspectives regarding cooperation as a central causal factor in shaping human behaviour, cognition, and culture during human evolution. Against this background, we analysed 23 German high school biology textbooks with the aim to understand if and how cooperation is presented as a causal factor in human evolution and behaviour.
OpenEvo is an educational innovation project from the Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
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