Material Detail

This lesson is based on a short article which offers a classroom strategy to help students resolve the common confusion of the mechanism for evolution due to Lamarck with Darwinian natural selection. Students will learn that: evolution proceeds by the process of variation, a genetically random process, and selection, an environmentally driven non-random process; organisms do not get what they need through inner wants; acquired characteristics are not passed on to offspring; mutations are not directed for the benefit of the individual; and evolution is neither random nor teleological, but driven by historical contingencies and the process of selection.

Disciplines:

• Education  / TeacherEd  / Teaching Methods  / Science