When students think of evolution, they might imagine T. rex, or perhaps an abiotic scene of sizzling electrical storms and harsh reducing atmospheres, an Earth that looks like a lunar landscape. Natural selection automatically elicits responses that include "survival of the fittest," and "descent with modification," and with…

Biology education research has shown that deeply rooted intuitions can influence students' understanding of biological phenomena. One example is design teleology, the intuition that organisms' traits were designed to fulfill a goal. Another example is psychological essentialism, the intuition that organisms have fixed essences. Past research has…

Storytelling can stimulate learning by delivering scientific content within a narrative that increases comprehension and engagement. In this article I describe the coevolutionary arms race between toxic newts and predatory garter snakes. This engaging story centers on the use of a deadly neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin (TTX) as an antipredator…

In instructional settings, evolution and natural selection are challenging concepts to teach, due to the fact that these topics are difficult to observe in the laboratory or lecture hall. In the past few years, Avida-ED has emerged as an innovative tool for teaching evolutionary principles. It allows students to directly observe effects of…

The purpose of this study is to develop a framework for analyzing classroom argumentation that includes a process of rebutting. A most commonly used framework to analyze argument in science education is Toulmin's Argumentation Pattern. It is useful for analyzing argumentation but it cannot represent the complexity of students' rebuttals during…

This study examined the impact of a pedagogy that is culturally influenced and laced with technological and contextual elements known as the culturo-techno-contextual approach (CTCA) on promoting knowledge retention of biology concepts. The research design was mixed methods, and the sample consisted of 88 senior secondary school II students…

There is an emphasis on survival-based selection in biology education that can allow students to neglect other important evolutionary components, such as sexual selection, reproduction, and inheritance. Student understanding of the role of reproduction in evolution is as important as student understanding of the role of survival. Limiting…

Students' understanding of the concepts that underlie evolution are often less than optimal and make it difficult for them to accept the theory of evolution. The aimed of this study were to: 1) map students' knowledge of Mutation and Recombination (M and R); and 2) analyze the effect of gender on their chairperson. This survey research involving…

Accurate, rational, and scientific decision making is now considered to be the most important skill in science education. Many studies have found that overconfidence bias is one of the cognitive biases hindering people from achieving such decision making. Gender and country play crucial roles in overconfidence bias. For instance, some particular…

Lisa Borgerding's work highlights how students can understand evolution without necessarily committing to it, and how learners may come to see it as one available way of thinking amongst others. This is presented as something that should be considered a successful outcome when teaching about material that many students may find incompatible with…

Life exhibitions in Japanese science museums (SMs) face difficulties in coping with rapid progress in the life sciences owing to certain constraints around the frequency of exhibit renovations, and the Japanese indigenous understanding of the natural world (Shizen) that Japanese visitors unconsciously bring with them. To what extent do current…

The molecular basis of evolution is an important concept to understand but one that students and teachers often find challenging. This article provides training and guidance for teachers on how to present molecular evolution concepts so that students will associate molecular changes with the evolution of form and function in organisms. Included…

Textbook descriptions of the foundations of Genetics give the impression that besides Mendel's no other research on heredity took place during the nineteenth century. However, the publication of the "Origin of Species" in 1859, and the criticism that it received, placed the study of heredity at the centre of biological thought. Consequently,…

Although historical changes in scientific ideas sometimes display striking similarities with students' conceptual progressions, some scholars have cautioned that such similarities lack meaningful commonalities. In the history of evolution, while Darwin and his contemporaries often used natural selection to explain evolutionary trait gain or…

This set of seven experiments examines reasoning about the inheritance and acquisition of physical properties in preschoolers, undergraduates, and biology experts. Participants (N = 390) received adoption vignettes in which a baby animal was born to one parent but raised by a biologically unrelated parent, and they judged whether the offspring…