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…

The U.S. Next Generation Science Standards treat biological adaptation as a disciplinary core idea, but various science educators recommend its introduction at different ages. The concept of biological adaptation elicits children's reasoning about organisms, their environments, and the relationship between organisms and their environments. The…

The federal government has repeatedly denied the introduction of creationism into public schools as it is a direct violation of the separation of church and state. Little is known about those who would opt to eliminate evolution in scientific curriculum altogether. The authors examined this more extreme anti-evolution perspective in a nationally…

What kinds of images of human beings illustrate human evolution in school textbooks? A comparison between the textbooks of eighteen different countries (twelve European countries and six non-European countries) was attempted. In six countries (Algeria, Malta, Morocco, Mozambique, Portugal, and Tunisia), we did not find any chapter on the topic of…