Intuitive conceptions based on cognitive biases (teleology, anthropomorphism, and essentialism) often prove helpful in everyday life while simultaneously being problematic in scientific contexts. Nonetheless, students often have intuitive conceptions of scientific topics such as evolution. As potential approaches to enable students to…

With applications of Tree of Life data becoming ever more prevalent in everyday contexts, tree thinking has emerged as a vital component of scientific literacy. This article reports a study testing the hypothesis that instruction in natural selection, which is the primary focus of US evolution education at the high school and introductory college…

The development of rich, reliable, and robust measures of the composition, structure, and stability of student thinking about core scientific ideas (such as natural selection) remains a complex challenge facing science educators. In their recent article (Nehm & Schonfeld 2008), the authors explored the strengths, weaknesses, and insights provided…