ABSTRACT

The central importance of evolution to all biological sciences is recognised by many authors. Despite this scientific consensus, the theory of evolution is commonly presented as one discrete topic among many in the biology curriculum. Possible reasons for this scenario include discomfort with the content, ideological opposition and teachers’ difficulties in concepts identified as essential for the understanding of evolution. In evolution education, there is a well-established literature on these aspects, but little has been discussed about the historical and philosophical issues concerning the challenges to the centrality of evolution in biology teaching. In this article, I argue that evolution at both basic and higher education levels is strongly based on the original evolutionary synthesis, with a focus on population genetics, and this is one of the reasons for the failure in establishing the centrality of evolution in biology teaching. Given the diversity and complexity of contemporary evolution theory, a more pluralistic perspective to evolutionary teaching is required. I propose that a causally pluralistic evolutionary worldview, which expands the range of causal factors contributing to evolutionary change, is essential when it comes to establishing the centrality of evolution in biology teaching.

摘要

许多作者都认识到进化对所有生物科学的核心重要性。尽管有这种科学共识，但进化论通常被视为生物学课程中众多主题中的一个独立主题。这种情况的可能原因包括对内容的不适、意识形态的反对以及教师在被认为对理解进化至关重要的概念方面的困难。在进化教育中，关于这些方面的文献已有完善，但很少讨论有关生物学教学中进化中心地位的挑战的历史和哲学问题。在这篇文章中，我认为基础教育和高等教育水平的进化都强烈地基于原始的进化综合，重点是群体遗传学，这也是未能在生物学教学中确立进化论中心地位的原因之一。鉴于当代进化论的多样性和复杂性，进化教学需要更加多元化的视角。我建议，在确立生物学教学中进化的中心地位时，一种因果多元的进化世界观（它扩大了导致进化变化的因果因素的范围）是必不可少的。