Sessão From primate archaeology to human evolution: apresentação de Sandra Assis

Title: DARWIN, HUMAN EVOLUTION AND THE TEACHING OF SCIENCE:A CASE STUDY FROM PORTUGAL
Author: Sandra Assis
Afilliation: CIAS – Centro de Investigação em Antropologia e Saúde, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Coimbra, Portugal

Abstract
During centuries, the origin of humanity was attributed to the driving force of elements or to supernatural entities. Only in the 19th century, with the raise of evolutionism after the publication of the book On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection by Charles Darwin, in 1859, these standards were put forward. According with this new model, life is not perceived as immutable thought time, but the result of a long evolutionary process. In the case of our species, a process that probably started almost 8 millions years ago. The concept of evolution is fundamental in the teaching of science in a way that goes beyond the scientific explanation. Although the unquestionable paper of evolution, frequently it seems neglected and/or forgotten in the classrooms and by our students. Many of these difficulties are present in the Portuguese educational system, especially the issue of human evolution. To overlap this difficulty, a pilot project entitled “Playing with the big three of Human Evolution [Brincar com a grande árvore da Evolução Humana] was developed by Grupo de Estudos em Evolução Humana in Portuguese schools. Thus, the aims of this presentation are twofold: firstly, to describe the impact of the evolutionary theories in Portugal, from the 19th century to the present and secondly,
to explore the results of five years of implementation of this pilot project.