For the clinical interview, I chose the evolution question of “describe how a species evolves.” This question was chosen because I personally had a hard time explaining how a species evolves so I wanted to learn more about the topic. I have taken many biology classes so I wanted to see how someone with a different biology background would explain the problem. Nehm and Reilly’s article titled “Biology Majors’ Knowledge and Misconceptions of Natural Selection” as well as Anderson, Fisher, and Norman’s article titled “Development and Evaluation of the Conceptual Inventory of Natural Selection” helped clear my personal misconceptions and taught me about some common misconceptions related to evolution. …show more content…
She said, “Yes I know of the liger which is a cross between a tiger and a lion.” Following up on that thought I asked “So can any two species interbreed?” To which Layla replied “Well they have to be similar in DNA I think… A hamster can’t have a baby with a giraffe.” I attempted to then go back to the original question of how a species evolves by asking “So does the liger become a new species? Or is it just a hybrid of two species?” Layla answered with “I think it becomes a new species…but then there are not that many ligers in the world so I don’t think there are enough ligers out there for scientists to consider it a species… I’m really not sure of the technical aspects of evolution.” With that, I decided to end the interview because I could tell that Layla was becoming increasingly confused with her thought process. I ended the interview with an open-ended question – “How do you think your biology teacher in the ninth grade could have taught the concept of evolution better?” She replied with “Well first off I should have paid more attention in class instead of goofing off so I’m not even sure of what my teacher taught.” After laughs from both sides, I thanked her for her time and ended the clinical