Public engagement is increasingly viewed as an important pillar of scientific scholarship. For early career and established scholars, however, navigating the mosaic landscape of public education and science communication, noted for rapid “ecological” succession, can be daunting. Moreover, academics are characterized by diverse skills, motivations, values, positionalities, and temperaments that may differentially incline individuals to particular public translation activities.

‘Describing at Large Their True and Lively Figure, their several Names, Conditions, Kinds, Virtues (both Natural and Fanciful), Countries of their Species, their Love and Hatred to Humankind, and the wonderful work of Natural Selection in their Evolution, Preservation, and Destruction.

Interwoven with curious variety of Creative Narrations out of Academic Literatures, Scholars, Artists, Scientists, and Poets. Illustrated with diverse Graphics and Emblems both pleasant and profitable for Students of all Faculties and Professions.’

‘Describing at Large Their True and Lively Figure, their several Names, Conditions, Kinds, Virtues (both Natural and Fanciful), Countries of their Species, their Love and Hatred to Humankind, and the wonderful work of Natural Selection in their Evolution, Preservation, and Destruction.

Interwoven with curious variety of Creative Narrations out of Academic Literatures, Scholars, Artists, Scientists, and Poets. Illustrated with diverse Graphics and Emblems both pleasant and profitable for Students of all Faculties and Professions.’

This item includes:

1) The official bracket files for the 2022 MMM tournament

2) A screen-reader enabled bracket file

3) 2022 March Mammal Madness Educational Materials Packet – in English

4) 2022 March Mammal Madness Educational Materials Packet – in Spanish

5) March Mammal Madness, Middle School Lesson Plan : Ecosystems & National Parks

6) March Mammal Madness, High School Lesson Plan : Ecosystems & National Parks 

Since 2018, MMM team members have written sport-style summaries following the live "play-by-play" narration of simulated combatant encounters on social media. These summaries, highlighting key adaptations, human impacts, and other scholarly information, have been provided to educators to describe tournament outcomes to their learners who do not follow the battle narrations "live" on social media.

March Mammal Madness is a science outreach project that, over the course of several weeks in March, reaches hundreds of thousands of people in the United States every year. We combine four approaches to science outreach – gamification, social media platforms, community event(s), and creative products – to run a simulated tournament in which 64 animals compete to become the tournament champion. While the encounters between the animals are hypothetical, the outcomes rely on empirical evidence from the scientific literature. Players select their favored combatants beforehand, and during the tournament scientists translate the academic literature into gripping “play-by-play” narration on social media. To date ~1100 scholarly works, covering almost 400 taxa, have been transformed into science stories. March Mammal Madness is most typically used by high-school educators teaching life sciences, and we estimate that our materials reached ~1% of high-school students in the United States in 2019. Here we document the intentional design, public engagement, and magnitude of reach of the project. We further explain how human psychological and cognitive adaptations for shared experiences, social learning, narrative, and imagery contribute to the widespread use of March Mammal Madness.

This packet includes:

 2021 Bracket Common Name 

2021 Bracket Latin Binomial 

Bracket FAQ (English) 

Pre-Tournament Research Lesson Plan (English) 

Tournament Lesson Plan & Worksheets (English) 

Visual Arts Lesson Plan (English) 

Language Arts Lesson Plan (English) 

Guide for Youngest Players (English)

JUMBO Bracket for Youngest Players (English)

2021 Bracket Common Name (Spanish) 

Pre-Tournament Research Lesson Plan (Spanish) 

Tournament Lesson Plan & Worksheets (Spanish) 

Visual Arts Lesson Plan (Spanish)

Language Arts Lesson Plan (Spanish) 

JUMBO Bracket for Youngest Players (Spanish) 

The recent battle reported from Washington about proposed national testing program does not tell the most important political story about high stakes tests. Politically popular school accountability systems in many states already revolve around statistical results of testing with high-stakes environments. The future of high stakes tests thus does not depend on what happens on Capitol Hill. Rather, the existence of tests depends largely on the political culture of published test results. Most critics of high-stakes testing do not talk about that culture, however. They typically focus on the practice legacy of testing, the ways in which testing creates perverse incentives against good teaching.

More important may be the political legacy, or how testing defines legitimate discussion about school politics. The consequence of statistical accountability systems will be the narrowing of purpose for schools, impatience with reform, and the continuing erosion of political support for publicly funded schools. Dissent from the high-stakes accountability regime that has developed around standardized testing, including proposals for professionalism and performance assessment, commonly fails to consider these political legacies. Alternatives to standardized testing which do not also connect schooling with the public at large will not be politically viable.