Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

A Closer Look At The Items Within Three Measures Of Evolution Acceptance: Analysis Of The Mate, I-Sea, And Gaene As A Single Corpus Of Items, William L. Romine, Amber Todd, Emily M. Walter

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Background

Current direct Likert measures for evolution acceptance include the MATE, GAENE, and I-SEA. Pros and cons of each of these instruments have been debated, and yet there is a dearth of research teasing out their similarities and differences when they are used together in a single context beyond the fact that their measures tend to be highly correlated. We administered these to 452 college students in non-major biology classes at two research-intensive universities from the Midwestern and Western United States to investigate the measurement properties of the items within these instruments when combined as a single corpus.

Results

Factor …

Gain-Of-Function Experiments With Bacteriophage Lambda Uncover Residues Under Diversifying Selection In Nature, Rohan Maddamsetti, Daniel T. Johnson, Stephanie J. Spielman, Katherine L. Petrie, Debora S. Marks, Justin R. Meyer

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Viral gain-of-function mutations frequently evolve during laboratory experiments. Whether the specific mutations that evolve in the lab also evolve in nature and whether they have the same impact on evolution in the real world is unknown. We studied a model virus, bacteriophage λ, that repeatedly evolves to exploit a new host receptor under typical laboratory conditions. Here, we demonstrate that two residues of λ’s J protein are required for the new function. In natural λ variants, these amino acid sites are highly diverse and evolve at high rates. Insertions and deletions at these locations are associated with phylogenetic patterns indicative …

Development And Evaluation Of A Model For Secondary Evolution Educators’ Professional Development Needs, William L. Romine, Ellen Barnett, Patricia J. Friedrichsen, Aaron J. Sickel

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Background

Professional development (PD) efforts have improved acceptance and pedagogical practice related to the theory of evolution in high school biology teachers. However, these teachers express need for more PD related to evolution. It therefore becomes necessary to understand teachers’ PD needs prior to structuring PD efforts.

Methods

We formulated and validated a model to explain secondary teachers’ PD needs using data from a survey of 276 secondary biology teachers who reported teaching evolution.

Results

In addition to reliable subscales, we found that obstacles to teaching evolution, school and community support for evolution instruction, confidence in evolution instruction, and prior …