Museums Teach Evolution

Natural history museums play a significant role in educating the general public about evolution. This article describes Explore Evolution, one of the largest evolution education projects funded by the National Science Foundation. A group of regional museums from the Midwestern United States worked with leading evolutionary scientists to create multiple permanent exhibit galleries and a curriculum book for youth. This program invites the public to experience current evolutionary research on organisms that range in size from HIV to whales. Learning research is being conducted on museum visitors to understand how they reason about evolution and to determine what influences the process of conceptual change.