Development and validation of a framework for the assessment of school curricula on the presence of evolutionary concepts (FACE)

Abstract

Evolution is a key concept of biology, fundamental to understand the world and address important societal problems, but research studies show that it is still not widely understood and accepted. Several factors are known to influence evolution acceptance and understanding, but little information is available regarding the impacts of the curriculum on these aspects. Very few curricula have been examined to assess the coverage of biological evolution. The available studies do not allow comparative analyses, due to the different methodologies employed by the authors. However, such an analysis would be useful for research purposes and for the development of appropriate educational policies to address the problem of a lack of evolution acceptance in some countries. In this paper we describe the steps through which we developed a valid and reliable instrument for curricula analysis known as FACE: “Framework to Assess the Coverage of biological Evolution by school curricula.” This framework was developed based on the “Understanding Evolution Conceptual Framework” (UECF). After an initial pilot study, our framework was reformulated based on identified issues and experts’ opinions. To generate validity and reliability evidence in support of the framework, it was applied to four European countries’ curricula. For each country, a team of a minimum of two national and two foreign coders worked independently to assess the curriculum using this framework for content analysis. Reliability evidence was estimated using Krippendorf's alpha and resulted in appropriate values for coding the examined curricula. Some issues that coders faced during the analysis were discussed and, to ensure better reliability for future researchers, additional guidelines and one extra category were included in the framework. The final version of the framework includes six categories and 34 subcategories. FACE is a useful tool for the analysis and the comparison of curricula and school textbooks regarding the coverage of evolution, and such results can guide curricula development.

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Designing Dissemination and Validation of a Framework for Teaching Cloud Fundamentals

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The Impact of Exploring Sexual Selection on Primary School Students’ Understanding of Evolution

“…In a systematic literature review conducted by Bruckermann et al (2020), aimed at identifying which precursory concepts in evolution early childhood and primary school children already possess or develop after an educational intervention, the authors found that even children aged up to seven years are able to understand the basic mechanisms of the core concepts in evolution, such as variation, inheritance and natural selection. Grether (2021) used lesson plans with active learning activities to teach specific evolutionary learning objectives (fossils, vestigial traits, common ancestry, heritability, natural selection and evolutionary time) to primary school students (grades [3][4][5]. This author reports a substantial improvement in the students' understanding of evolutionary concepts after engaging in these activities.…”