Interviews with 84 students (12- to 16-year-olds) suggest they have a poor understanding of biological education. Students' responses, question context influences, age trends, and implications for biology teachers are discussed. Among conclusions are: (1) Most students use teleological and anthropomorphic explanations; and (2) evolution should be…

Examined Australian medical school students' (N=150) conceptual frameworks and reasoning patterns related to natural selection. Results indicate that the majority believed that evolutionary changes occur as a result of need. Implications related to student learning and to science and medical education are considered. (JN)

Describes three episodes illustrating teacher's and preservice teacher's difficulties in teaching evolution. Presents a series of activities for teaching evolution using the conceptual change approach to teaching science. (PR)

Reports on a study designed to examine students' understanding of certain aspects of heat, pressure, and evolution. Results indicated that little change was apparent over the two-year period of the study, with most of the students in the 12 to 14 age range at the same conceptual level as the 14 to 16 year olds. (TW)

Explores the issue of the consistency of use of students' conceptions across different tasks which probed understandings of aspects of pressure, heat, and biological evolution. Findings indicate that children have alternative frameworks for all investigated areas. (ML)

A model for developing instructional analogies was used to produce experimental treatments that included text from a high school biology textbook to which was added extended verbal analogies written by the researcher linking each of two biology concepts to analogous familiar concepts. The control treatment was text from the biology textbook…