Agency in Evolution Education

Simple answer: Agency is understood here as the capacity of an agent to act in a goal-directed way within an environment (see our minimal model). Sometimes these goal directed behaviors influence the enviromental conditons of “natural” selection, shaping evolutionary adaptations in new directions.

However: Different scientists, within and between disciplines, including within and between the sub-disciplines of evolutionary biology, all may hold very different conceptions as to the appropriate definition or application of a concept of “agency” in evolution (and for that matter, the same can be said for the concept of evolution). In our resources on OpenEvo, we are concerned with various notions of agency:

• Biological Agency (sensu Levin & Dennett 2020; Sokol et al. 2015)
• Psychological Agency (sensu Tomasello 2022; Sokol et al. 2015)
• Socio-Cultural Agency (sensu Tomasello 2022; Sokol et al. 2015)
• Computational Agency (sensu Rahwan et al. 2019; Levin & Dennett 2020)

Not exactly.

Some scientists do believe that the value of Darwin’s thinking about evolution is primarily, or perhaps only found in how it helps us understand how the apparent design of biology can emerge without an outsider designer (e.g. a god), or the actions of the individual (e.g. as Lamarck had theorized before Darwin). That is, these scientists believe the value of Darwin’s evolutionary theory was its framing of decentralized causes, those factors not significantly influenced by the goal-directed behaviors of any agents.

However, other scientists look at Darwin’s thinking, and the work that has followed, and see the value in reasoning about both decentralized causes, as well as those more proximally or distally driven by the goal-directed behaviors of agents within the system (agential causes in the natural world). You can read more in Hanisch & Eirdosh (2021), our article on causal mapping and teleological reasoning. 

Reasonable scientists and other humans can and do disagree on this aspect of the science.

However, scientific literacy in evolution should be defined by an ability to reason about both decentralized and agential causes in processes of evolutionary adaptation, and the possible interactions between them.

That is, a central conceptual aim of evolution education is to support the metacognitive co-regulation of agential and decentralized reasoning (similar to arguments made by González Galli et al 2020; Perez et al 2022).

In that context, it can also be said that a central aim of evolution education includes helping students to refine and develop their own agential thinking in ways that are scientifically adequate and practical for the communities and global society they inhabit.

Absolutely not! 

The conceptions of agency within evolution that are described within OpenEvo pertain to naturalistic, science-based thinking about the origins, diversity, and flexibility of goal-directed behaviors in the world. 

Sometimes, some scientists or educators that are concerned with issues of creationism or intelligent design are hesitant to discuss or clarify concepts of agency for fear that misconceptions may emerge. However, we feel misconceptions are more likely if we do not give students the opportunity to explicitly reflect on scientifically adequate models of goal-directed behaviors in evolutionary biology.

We unequivocally reject the scientific merits of any arguments that invoke a supernatural creator or intelligence beyond the scope of a naturalistic science.

We recommend that educators concerned with preventing or reducing Creationist beliefs use a combination of Culturally Competent teaching methods (see Barnes & Brownell 2017), combined with a conceptual learning approach that adequately covers the relationships between agency and evolutionary adaptation.

Definitely not!

Many students begin their learning journey into evolution science by learning about artificial selection and domestication, for example, within the context of agriculture. Thus, for many, our first example of evolution will be one that integrates both agential and decentralized causes (farmers have goals, but they don’t control all aspects of the adaptive changes within populations on their farm). 

Further, thinking about the minds, goals, behaviors, and outcomes of those agents around us, is a very intuitive, and potentially helpful way of understanding the world, when applied critically. Thus, while it is an open question for educational design research as to the best scope and sequence of content, it is likely that even primary school students can productively reflect on some aspects of the relations between agential and decentralized causes in ways that prepare them for everyday life, and scientific literacy.