The Department of Biology Education organizes international symposium "From Genetics to Evolution Education and vice versa" at IPN

For the fourth time, experts from different parts of the world (including Great Britain, Israel, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, and the USA) met to discuss central questions of biology education research in a collegial atmosphere: What should genetics and evolution teaching look like in the 21st century? Should biology education be limited to the scientific aspects or should social issues such as challenging racist theories also be addressed? What knowledge do learners need to be able to formulate biological explanations in a scientifically correct way, and how can genetics and evolution lessons be effectively linked?

fltr: Dennis M. Lee, Ross Nehm, Rishi Krishnamoorthy, Michael J. Reiss, Ravit Golan Duncan, Anat Yarden, Isabell K. Adler, Rachel Schwager, Niklas Gericke, Michal Haskel Ittah, María Pilar Jiménez-Aleixandre, Marcus Hammann, Berrit Czinczel, Ute Harms, Daniela Fiedler, Kostas Kampourakis

Over a period of two intensive days, the participants presented current research results and discussed different theoretical approaches. From the IPN, Prof. Dr. Ute Harms, PhD student Isabell Adler and Dr. Daniela Fiedler presented the EvoPrime project, which investigates the extent to which basic knowledge about evolution can already be initiated in kindergarten or elementary school. Central findings of this and other work from the symposium will be compiled in the coming months and published together with international colleagues.

 

The event was organized by Prof. Dr. Ute Harms of the IPN Kiel together with Michal Haskel-Ittah of the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot and Prof. Dr. Kostas Kampourakis of the University of Geneva. For the next symposium, the group is expected to meet in 2024 at the University of Karlstad (Sweden) hosted by Prof. Dr. Niklas Gericke.