Teaching “controversial” scientific topics such as evolution and climate change can be a challenge for K-12 teachers to approach. Iowa City’s annual Darwin Days event included a teachers’ workshop that helps teachers to navigate those questions.

Teachers could have earned continuing education credit from the event, which was held Feb. 22 and 23.

Featured guest Paul Strode led a workshop on mathematics, statistics, and scientific uncertainty. Strode, a high-school teacher in Boulder, Colorado, focuses on teaching students how to identify credible information in science.

“Statistics are the language of science, and a missing piece of science education has been data literacy as we have pushed more and more content and trivia for years, due in large part to standardized testing,” Strode said in an email to The Daily Iowan. “More and more data are being made available to the general public, but they have little — if any — training in how to interpret them. The lack of data literacy allows bad actors to use data in nefarious ways to manipulate unsuspecting people.”

Strode said the teachers can benefit from an increased understanding of statistics in science.

“I love to teach, and I love to learn new things, but often learning new things can take a long time [and] can generate a lot of anxiety,” Strode said. “One thing that generates anxiety in teachers is data analysis, because few teachers enter the classroom with a good practical background in quantitative reasoning.”

Robert Ross, the director of outreach at the Paleontological Research Institution, gave a workshop helping teachers navigate controversial scientific topics in the classroom.

“Some of these issues, such as evolution, are socially but not scientifically controversial, while others reflect unresolved scientific research or applications of results,” Ross said in an email to The Daily Iowan.

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Strode said teaching students about energy helps students improve their systems-thinking skills and helps them apply scientific concepts they have learned to real-life situations.

“Some energy choices are clearly better than others, but all energy types have environmental impacts and social and economic opportunities and costs that need to be weighed,” Strode said. “Teaching about energy use provides opportunities for students to apply their learning to real-world circumstances at home or school, such as finding creative solutions to use less energy, diminish carbon emissions, and lower energy costs.”

Darwin Days Co-Chair Mary Kosloski said the workshop mainly attracts high-school teachers, at least right now.

“We’re trying to get a variety of teachers. We’re very interested in trying to attract more teachers locally and regionally,” Kosloski said. “In particular, with the increasing emphasis on the Next Generation Science Standards, we’re thinking that the workshop could bring something of value to the table for these educators.”

Kosloski said teachers benefit from guidance around teaching controversial topics.

“A lot of the things that you teach in a science classroom, especially biology, will tie into evolution,” she said. “Being able to teach evolution well is really important because it can be kind of an intimidating topic to cover.”