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Using stories to inculcate Darwinism

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Well, the teachers have to do something because evidence from nature does not really support that unilateral Darwinian view of life:

Storytelling — the oldest form of teaching — is the most effective way of teaching primary school children about evolution, say researchers at the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath.

A randomised controlled trial found that children learn about evolution more effectively when engaged through stories read by the teacher, than through doing tasks to demonstrate the same concept.

The scientists investigated several different methods of teaching evolution in primary schools, to test whether a pupil-centred approach (where pupils took part in an activity) or a teacher-centred approach (where pupils were read a story by the teacher), led to a greater improvement in understanding of the topic.

They also looked at whether using human-based examples of evolution (comparing arm bones in humans with those in animals), or more abstract examples that were harder to emotionally engage with (comparing the patterns of trilobites), produced better results in terms of the children’s understanding of evolution.

Whilst all the methods improved the pupils’ understanding of evolution, the study, published in the journal Science of Learning, found that the story-based approach combined with the abstract examples of evolution were the most effective lessons.

University of Bath, “Pupils can learn more effectively through stories than activities” at ScienceDaily

Of course! Because stories don’t need to be real, only comprehensible and entertaining, they would naturally work to inculcate Darwinism. Or magic. Better than facts would. But so?

Paper. (open access)

A reader describes this candidly as “hogwash.” Just indoctrination.

Comments
Ever heard of parables? Nothing new under the sun.ScuzzaMan
December 10, 2020
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Well Darwinians are already good at making up and telling stories so this should come naturally to them.Fasteddious
December 9, 2020
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None of this has ever been effective. Polls consistently show that a majority of people are closer to the creation side.polistra
December 9, 2020
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>A randomised controlled trial found that children learn about evolution more effectively when engaged through stories read by the teacher, than through doing tasks to demonstrate the same concept. Boy, these people are desperate. Good news is that we can pick up the techniques and use them ourselves--and save the expense to boot! 8-)EDTA
December 8, 2020
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