Causal Mapping as a Teaching Tool for Reflecting on Causation in Human Evolution
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Causal Mapping as a Teaching Tool for Reflecting on Causation in Human Evolution Susan Hanisch 1
& Dustin Eirdosh
1
# The Author(s) 2020
Abstract
Teleological reasoning is viewed as a major hurdle to evolution education, and yet, eliciting, interpreting, and reflecting upon teleological language presents an arguably greater challenge to the evolution educator and researcher. This article argues that making explicit the role of behavior as a causal factor in the evolution of particular traits may prove productive in helping students to link their everyday experience of behavior to evolutionary changes in populations in ways congruent with scientific perspectives. We present a teaching tool, used widely in other parts of science and science education, yet perhaps underutilized in human evolution education—the causal map—as a novel direction for driving conceptual change in the classroom about the role of organism behavior and other factors in evolutionary change. We describe the scientific and conceptual basis for using such causal maps in human evolution education, as well as theoretical considerations for implementing the causal mapping tool in human evolution classrooms. Finally, we offer considerations for future research and educational design. Abbreviations DBIR Design-based implementation research PCK Pedagogical content knowledge
1 Introduction Humans have evolved an elaborate capacity to develop and act on our own intentions and those we perceive in others (the latter a component of Theory of Mind; Dunbar 2003; Whiten Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-02000157-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
* Susan Hanisch [email protected] Dustin Eirdosh [email protected]
1
Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
S. Hanisch, D. Eirdosh
and Erdal 2012). These evolved capacities for the perception of needs, for goal-directed behavior in response to those needs, and for intentional reasoning are known to pose challenges in understanding evolutionary processes. Evolution educators and students alike may find it challenging to resolve the populational and stochastic aspects of evolutionary processes with the directed changes associated with our experience of needs and intentional action. Such challenges to evolution education are one facet of a broader class of teleological reasoning, the appeal to function, need, or purpose in evolutionary explanations. Even in light of such challenges, many education researchers have highlighted the potential for human evolution examples to cultivate understanding of general evolutionary concepts, e.g., because the topic is engaging, it connects to students’ lives, or because concepts like variation are more salient in our own species (Besterman and Baggot la Velle 2007; Nettle 2010; Pobiner 2016; Pobiner et al. 2018; Werth 2009). Furthermore, because it concerns our own species, an
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