Tree Thinking for Educators
March 11, 2006
Rebecca Shapley and Kirsten Fisher
Location: Valley Life Sciences Building, UC Berkeley
The broad-scale history of genetic descent during organismal evolution takes the form of a single, enormous "Tree of Life." Its implication - that all living things on Earth today are related - has forever changed our perception of the world around us. The use of phylogenetic principles, or "tree thinking" is almost as ubiquitous today as the idea of Darwinian evolution. Because they reflect the history of transmission of life's genetic information, phylogenetic trees have the unique power to organize our knowledge of diverse organisms, genomes, and molecules. Phylogenetic trees and tree-thinking also hold great promise in the biology classroom, where they can be used to organize information and direct inquiry-based learning.
This one-day workshop will introduce pre-college and introductory undergraduate biology educators to effective use of tree thinking in the classroom. The first part of the workshop will cover phylogenetic trees and recent research into student comprehension of tree diagrams, with suggestions on effective techniques for teaching tree thinking. The second part of the workshop will present practical classroom ready exercises and effective approaches for using phylogenies to organize biology curriculum, with attention to current federal and state science content standards. Teachers completing this workshop will be provided with a certificate of professional development hours.
