Paleoanthropology and Pedagogy: Raising Horizons for the Next Generations

Summary

The 21st century will be remembered as a period of exponential change within paleoanthropology. Though such developments pose academic challenges, an overlooked issue is how we communicate this information to students. A constantly changing foundation of knowledge that increasingly requires an understanding of complex theoretical techniques, coupled with the importance of student satisfaction surveys, educators are faced with a pedagogical dilemma: stick with ‘established’ teaching methods though they are increasingly recognised as being ineffective and may even alienate students from their passion of human origins, or invest more of what little time we have in developing new, innovative ways of teaching even if that increases the risk of failure. This paper presents two pedagogical exercises, developed over four years of undergraduate teaching, that ‘open up’ theoretical concepts in paleoanthropology by removing paleoanthropology entirely. Utilising a pop cultural staple in the form of Star Trek which addresses issues of speciation and diversity relevant to paleoanthropology, these exercises offer an innovative, fun, and informative way for students to learn, understand, and apply the theoretical underpinnings of species recognition and phylogeny; that once understood can be applied to the fossil record with a greater understanding and confidence than more traditional methods currently provide.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20779