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Concept Inventories As a Resource for Teaching Evolution Robert E Furrow and Hsu Evo Edu Outreach (2019) 12:2 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12052-018-0092-8 Evolution: Education and Outreach CURRICULUM AND EDUCATION Open Access Concept inventories as a resource for teaching evolution Robert E. Furrow1*† and Jeremy L. Hsu2† Abstract Understanding evolution is critical to learning biology, but few college instructors take advantage of the body of peer-reviewed literature that can inform evolution teaching and assessment. Here we summarize the peer-reviewed papers on tools to assess student learning of evolutionary concepts. These published concept inventories provide a resource for instructors to design courses, gauge student preparation, identify key misconceptions in their student population, and measure the impact of a lesson, course, or broader curriculum on student learning. Because these inventories vary in their format, target audience, and degree of validation, we outline and explain these features. In addition to summarizing the published concept inventories on topics within evolution, we lay out a fexible frame- work to help instructors decide when and how to use them. Keywords: Assessment, Concept inventories, Evolution, Learning goals Introduction (American Society of Plant Biologists and the Botanical Facility with evolutionary concepts is foundational to a Society of America 2016; Merkel et al. 2012; Tansey et al. rich understanding of biology, and several large, collabo- 2013), and translated into a framework to help instruc- rative eforts to improve undergraduate education have tors align their departmental educational goals with outlined this importance (American Association for the Vision and Change (Brownell et al. 2014). However, even Advancement of Science 2011; Association of Ameri- with clear educational goals in mind, carefully measur- can Medical Colleges and the Howard Hughes Medical ing student learning and adjusting teaching practices to Institute 2009; National Research Council 2003, 2009, achieve these goals is a daunting task (Handelsman et al. 2012). Tinking Evolutionarily, a report summarizing a 2004). convocation organized by the National Research Coun- One way to measure student learning, usually within cil and the National Academy of Sciences, lays out the the context of a single course or module, is by using a value of and practical approaches to infusing the teach- concept inventory. Concept inventories are test-based ing of evolution throughout biology courses across K-12 assessments of a concept or set of concepts, usually and undergraduate curricula (National Research Council using multiple-choice questions (D’Avanzo 2008; Knight 2012). Focusing on undergraduate curricula, the Ameri- 2010). Te incorrect choices for a question are called dis- can Association for the Advancement of Science report tractors, and are ideally based around common student Vision and Change identifes core concepts within evolu- misconceptions (Haladyna et al. 2002; Sadler 1998). For tionary biology for developing biological literacy (Ameri- example, to create the Genetic Drift Inventory (GeDI), a can Association for the Advancement of Science 2011). concept inventory of genetic drift, the authors used stu- Tat succinct description of concepts has since been dent interviews and built upon previous work to iden- interpreted and elaborated for specifc felds of biology tify six common student misconceptions about genetic drift, then designed many of the inventory’s questions to *Correspondence: [email protected] assess these (see Table 3 in Price et al. 2014, as well as †Robert E. Furrow and Jeremy L. Hsu contributed equally to this work Andrews et al. 2012). One misconception they identifed 1 University of California, Davis, 1544 Newton Court Rm 203, Davis, CA was that “Natural selection is always the most powerful 95618, USA Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s) 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creat​iveco​mmons​.org/licen​ses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. Furrow and Hsu Evo Edu Outreach (2019) 12:2 Page 2 of 11 mechanism of evolution, and it is the primary agent of inventories. We also briefy outline the general process of evolutionary change”, and four of the 22 questions on the concept inventory validation. To ground the discussion in inventory test some aspect of this misconception. practice, we explain several ways an instructor might use Despite the growing number of concept inventories the inventory to support their teaching, including appli- assessing topics in evolution, there are many impedi- cations that do not require formal student test-taking. ments to their widespread use among college instructors. First, the current concept inventories cover only a few of Why and how to use concept inventories the major topics that may be taught in an undergraduate Many papers have examined the goals and benefts evolution course. In an analysis of peer-reviewed evo- of using concept inventories to inform undergradu- lution education research, Ziadie and Andrews (2018) ate teaching (Adams and Wieman 2011; D’Avanzo 2008; found that the majority of published papers pertaining to Garvin-Doxas et al. 2007; Knight 2010; Libarkin 2008; assessment of evolutionary concepts relate only to natu- Marbach-Ad et al. 2010; Smith and Tanner 2010; Steif and ral selection or phylogenetics (particularly tree-think- Hansen 2007). Here, we synthesize and build upon these ing). Many common topics in undergraduate evolution goals, highlighting several key benefts of using concept courses had limited or no coverage. In addition, Ziadie inventories to inform teaching of evolutionary concepts. and Andrews note there are few literature reviews of such assessments, and that college instructors who wish to use Concept inventories with validity evidence based on test these assessments in their teaching would beneft from a content can inform learning objectives within a course review of evolution-related assessments that summarize or across a broader curriculum both the topics and misconceptions covered and the dif- Te majority (14 out of 16) of concept inventories relat- ferences in approach to their development. ing to evolution that we identifed had empirical evidence Alongside the challenge of uneven coverage, college for the validity of the test content (see Box 1 and Table 1), instructors also face barriers to translating this work into meaning that there were several steps in the development practical use (Anderson 2007). Instructors often have of the concept inventory where content experts (i.e. evo- limited time and training to apply new teaching meth- lution experts) or other sources of expert knowledge (e.g. ods (American Association for the Advancement of Sci- peer-reviewed literature or textbooks) were consulted. A ence 2011; Henderson et al. 2011; Henderson and Dancy subset of these concept inventories also attempt to cover 2007), and may face tensions with professional norms all major themes relevant for the given topic assessed in about scientifc identity (Brownell and Tanner 2012). the concept inventory by asking the content experts to In some cases, discipline-based educational research delineate main learning goals and concepts related to the may not be presented in a way that is clearly connected topic. As such, these concept inventories can be used to to classroom application (Kempa 2002). In other cases, identify potential core ideas related to a topic, which can instructors may not have confdence in the validity of the in turn infuence an instructor’s preparation for a course. interpretation of educational research (Herron and Nur- If the instructor follows principles of backward design renbern 1999). (Wiggins and McTighe 2005), then these concept inven- Concept inventories avoid some of these concerns, as tories provide a ready-made list of learning goals and they are generally designed to be easily used within the concepts relevant to the evolutionary topic. current framework of a course. However, there are limi- tations to their efective use. Te target audience is not Box 1—validation always clear, and instructors may be unsure of exactly how to interpret results. Furthermore, concept invento- ries are often limited in their scope and interpretation, A concept inventory is a test to assess conceptual and can be infuenced by the specifc design of the test understanding. But what exactly is this test measur- questions and logistics of test implementation. Under- ing? Validation is the process of gathering evidence standing how the inventory creators gathered evidence about the “the degree to which evidence and theory about its validity (Box 1) is critical (Adams and Wieman support the interpretations of test scores for proposed 2011). uses” (American Educational Research Association Tis paper aims to be a resource for college instruc- et al. 2014). In other words, validity evidence is criti- tors in evolution, helping to minimize the challenges cal to ensure that a test is actually assessing student and maximize the benefts of using concept inventories understanding of the concepts that it purports to meas- in teaching. We present the logic of why and how an ure. Many forms of validity evidence can be gathered instructor might choose
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