Even though genetics has been implemented in biology curricula at secondary schools for decades, reports repeatedly indicate that students still hold various misconceptions about this topic. To successfully target these misconceptions, we need to know their nature and origin. We aimed to investigate these properties in the Czech educational system…

A scientific conceptual understanding of photosynthesis and respiration provides an important basis for understanding nature and the regulations of life. Photosynthesis and respiration are complex processes, and learning about them requires a proper understanding of their various aspects, from molecular biology to the ecosystem level. This study…

Science and environmental educators implicitly presuppose that the ecosystem per se is clearly defined and consider learners' misunderstandings to be incorrect scientific interpretations of uncontested knowledge content. The present study, however, explores how in-service secondary education Greek biology teachers address the topic of 'ecosystem…

Research in developmental psychology has shown that deeply-rooted, intuitive ways of thinking, such as design teleology and psychological essentialism, impact children's scientific explanations about natural phenomena. Similarly, biology education researchers have found that students often hold inaccurate conceptions about natural phenomena, which…

An understanding of biological variation is important for understanding ecological interactions, ecosystem function, and species' response to environmental change. Biological variation is essential to species survival because natural selection acts upon the phenotypic variation within a population: the more varied the population's genetic…

The present study elaborates on a domain-specific approach to NOS (Nature Of Science) and employs a NOTSs (Nature Of The Sciences) agenda to investigate how Greek in-service physics teachers understand the unique features of school physics and biology. Our theoretical framework focuses on the notion of worldview and important differences that…

Teachers need to be aware of biology misconceptions in their classrooms and how to address them. In response, researchers and science educators have suggested and examined effective practices to prevent and ameliorate misconceptions. An extensive review of the literature gives researchers and educators insights into trends, practices, and gaps in…

The need to make higher education curricula gender-inclusive is increasingly pressing as student cohorts diversify. We adopted a student-staff partnership approach to design, integrate, and evaluate a module that taught first-year science students the difference between biological sex, gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation in…

The aim of this study is to find out young Turkish students' opinions about living thing concept in detail and to investigate the criteria used by the students to define this concept. The study sample consisted of randomly selected 140 students studying at the 3rd, 4th and 5th grades in four different primary and middle schools located in the…

Research on science-education reform affirms the importance of taking into consideration teachers? pedagogical beliefs in relation of the constructivist perspective to ensure successful implementation of a reform-oriented curriculum. In addition, prominent studies pinpoint the need for teachers to have sufficient pedagogical content knowledge…

Misconceptions are a barrier to understanding biology hence, to promote meaningful learning, it is necessary to overcome these difficulties with the help of different instructional methods rather than traditional instructional methods. Therefore it could be very interesting to find out "how students' prior knowledge of genetics affects…

Evolutionary theory is a central tenet of biological science, and it is essential for all science teachers, early childhood through secondary, to have a clear understanding of not only the science behind evolution, but also the legal precedents for teaching evolution in the classroom. This study examines the effectiveness of a curriculum on…

The aspiration of biology education is to give students tools to apply knowledge learned in the classroom to everyday life. Genetic modification is a real-world biological concept that relies on an in-depth understanding of the molecular behavior of DNA and proteins. This study investigated undergraduate biology students' conceptions of…

Understanding genetic drift is crucial for a comprehensive understanding of biology, yet it is difficult to learn because it combines the conceptual challenges of both evolution and randomness. To help assess strategies for teaching genetic drift, we have developed and evaluated the Genetic Drift Inventory (GeDI), a concept inventory that measures…

Background: Studies have shown that students' knowledge of osmosis and diffusion and the concepts associated with these processes is often inaccurate. This is important to address, as these concepts not only provide the foundation for more advanced topics in biology and chemistry, but are also threaded throughout both state and national science…