Student reasoning about cases of natural selection is often plagued by errors that stem from miscategorising selection as a direct, causal process, misunderstanding the role of randomness, and from the intuitive ideas of intentionality, teleology and essentialism. The common thread throughout many of these reasoning errors is a failure to apply…

The ability to interpret and reason from Tree of Life diagrams is a key component of twenty-first century science literacy. This article reports on the authors' continued development of a multifaceted research-based curriculum--including an instructional booklet, lectures, laboratories and a field activity--to teach such tree thinking to biology…

Students often have misconceptions about natural selection as they misuse a direct causal schema to explain the process. Natural selection is in fact an emergent process where random interactions lead to changes in a population. The misconceptions stem from students' lack of emergent schema for natural selection. In order to help students…

We describe an alternative to the kinds of observation-based lab exercises that are often used to cover animal and plant evolution with respect to transitioning from aquatic to terrestrial habitats. We wrote this activity to address these objectives, but also to model the process of scientific inquiry and to require students to collect and analyze…

The aim of this study was to design and evaluate an inquiry- and activity-based learning unit for the classroom that uses biological collections to teach key evolutionary concepts and to support the understanding and appreciation of the work of a museum. The unit consisted of three parts that focused on the most important tasks of museums:…

Research Findings: Evolution by natural selection is often relegated to the high school curriculum on the assumption that younger students cannot grasp its complexity. We sought to test that assumption by teaching children ages 4-12 (n = 96) a selection-based explanation for biological adaptation and comparing their success to that of adults…

This study examines the subjects and concepts in biology perceived to be difficult to learn and teach by 759 pre-service biology teachers registered in the pedagogical formation program at Uludag University Faculty of Education in the academic year of 2005-2016, as well as the associations that word "biology" first calls to their mind.…

In all human cultures, people gesture iconically. However, the evolutionary basis of iconic gestures is unknown. In this study, chimpanzees and bonobos, and 2- and 3-year-old children, learned how to operate two apparatuses to get rewards. Then, at test, only a human adult had access to the apparatuses, and participants could instruct her about…

This article explores the relationships between (a) the quality of state science standards and student science achievement, (b) the public's belief in teaching evolution and the quality of state standards, and (c) the public's belief in teaching evolution and student science achievement. Using multiple measures, we find no evidence of a…

This study explores learning about evolution when information is presented in either a narrative or an expository text (ET). Narratives engage the imagination, and consequently may allow children to overcome conceptual constraints that make evolution difficult to comprehend. Participants were 16 Year One, 21 Year Two and 25 Year Three pupils from…

Research Findings: Prior research indicates that shared book reading is an effective method for teaching biological concepts to young children. Adult questioning during reading enhances children's comprehension. We investigated whether adult prompting during the reading of an electronic book enhanced children's understanding of a biological…

Analogies play significant roles in communication as well as in problem solving and model building in science domains. Analogies have also been incorporated into several different instructional strategies--most notably in science domains where the concepts and principles to be learned are abstract or complex. Although several instructional models…

Current educational reform calls for increased integration between science and mathematics to overcome the shortcomings in students' quantitative skills. Data Nuggets (free online resource, http://datanuggets.org) are worksheets that bring data into the classroom, repeatedly guiding students through the scientific method and making claims…

The purpose of this study was to determine relationships between New Jersey biology teachers' personal characteristics and religious backgrounds and the time spent and approach to teaching evolution. The research instrument chosen was a cross-sectional survey. Survey questions were presented in various forms: fill in, single response, Likert…

An anonymous survey instrument was used for a ten year study to gauge college student attitudes toward evolution. Results indicate that students are most likely to accept evolution as a historical process for change in physical features of non-human organisms. They are less likely to accept evolution as an ongoing process that shapes all traits…