Education Brown Bag
Using Evolution to Teach
May 9, 2014
Academic building B room 124, 5:00 PM
Cosponsored/ hosted by the Professional Graduate Education Organization (PEGO)
This event is targeted at graduate students, local teachers, and faculty.
Abstract:
Evolutionary theory is highly relevant to education in ways that go beyond the need to teach evolution in public schools. We will make two additional evolution-education connections in our talk. First, evolutionary theory can be used to design social environments that are maximally conducive to learning all subjects. Second, evolutionary training can increase general cognitive thinking skills, including the ability to transfer knowledge across domains. We will illustrate these points with two studies, involving a program for at risk-high school students and a college course that teaches evolution across the curriculum, respectively.
Ample discussion following brief remarks from the speakers.
Speakers:
David Sloan Wilson
SUNY Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology
Director of EvoS
Binghamton University
Richard A. Kauffman, PhD
Department of Biological Sciences
Binghamton University
Suggested Reading:
“A Program for At-Risk High School Students Informed by
Evolutionary Science”
http://bnp.binghamton.edu/
“The Evolutionary Biology of Education: How Our Hunter-Gatherer Educative Instincts Could Form the Basis for Education Today”
http://link.springer.com/
Suggested popular reading:
Education section on Evolution: This View of Life online magazine
http://
