Teachers' ability to diagnose and deal with alternative student conceptions of evolution

Abstract

Students possess alternative conceptions of many science topics, and these conceptions can act as obstacles for learning scientific concepts. In the field of biology education, students' alternative conceptions of evolution have been widely investigated. However, there is little research on how teachers diagnose and deal with these alternative conceptions, although these abilities are a crucial part of teachers' pedagogical content knowledge. Additionally, little is known about how these abilities are connected to professional experience and content knowledge. Thus, our study investigated how (prospective) biology teachers at various points in their teaching careers diagnosed and reported dealing with alternative conceptions. Therefore, 182 preservice biology teachers, biology teachers in practical training, and in‐service biology teachers were surveyed using a questionnaire. The participants were confronted with students' explanations of evolutionary phenomena, most of them based on common student conceptions, such as anthropomorphism, teleology, and essentialism. These student conceptions are rooted in cognitive biases and are common in evolutionary and other contexts. We found that the participants diagnosed only approximately half of the alternative conceptions, with the in‐service teachers diagnosing significantly more of the alternative conceptions than the preservice teachers. Furthermore, the analyses revealed a variety of ways to deal with student conceptions. The in‐service teachers more often suggested scientifically correct approaches that address student conceptions, whereas the preservice teachers more often did not respond or responded incorrectly. Moreover, the ability to diagnose and deal with alternative conceptions correlated with teachers' content knowledge regarding the topic of evolution and their acceptance of evolution.

STEM and Non-STEM Misconceptions About Evolution: Findings from 5 Years of Data

“…“Evolution is the most profound and powerful idea to have been conceived in the last two centuries” (Diamond, 2001 , p. vii). However, evolution education faces numerous challenges, such as instructors’ lack of sufficient knowledge of evolution (Siani et al, 2022 ), instructors’ poor pedagogical content knowledge to diagnose and deal with student misconceptions of biological evolution (Hartelt et al, 2022 ), student opposition to learning evolution (Siani et al, 2022 ), and the absence of research on misconceptions about evolution in countries, such as Chile, Colombia, Brazil, and Greece. Deniz and Borgerding ( 2018b ) stress that the documentation of evolution education issues around the globe is a necessary step to overcome the multiple challenges of preparing citizens to think critically about the theory of evolution.…”

Visual resources and interaction in Grade 4 science teaching—Moving in and out of discourse when exploring concepts of evolution and adaption

“…While this may be according to their intuitive understanding rather than echoing the teacher, the design‐based explanations appeared to be adopted as a pedagogical shorthand. Although the participating teacher's lack of science training may have been an influencing factor (Hartelt et al, 2022), previous research has underscored both the frequent use of pedagogical shorthand in different kinds of material (Gregory, 2009; Moore et al, 2002) and ambivalent stances of biology teachers that involves design‐based and anthropomorphic perspectives (Gresch, 2020; Nehm et al, 2009; Nehm & Schonfeld, 2007). However, supported by disciplinary examples represented by visual support images and whiteboard drawings, the participating teacher adopted a more disciplinary orientation in explanations of natural selection.…”

“…However, research has shown that teachers often have a limited understanding of evolution (Buchan, 2019;Kuschmierz et al, 2020). While findings from Hartelt et al (2022) showed a correlation between teachers' content knowledge and their ability to deal with alternative conceptions, other studies have shown that even teachers with a strong disciplinary background in biology may express intuitive conceptions relating to evolution; for example, that traits arise according to needs or the use or disuse of functions (Nehm et al, 2009;Nehm & Schonfeld, 2007).…”

Validity aspects in measuring evolution acceptance: Evidence from surveys of preservice biology teachers and creationists

“…In recent years, the usage of the I‐SEA has increased (e.g., Barnes et al, 2019, 2020a, 2020b, 2021a, 2021b, 2022b; Ferguson & Jensen, 2021; Fiedler et al, 2019; Hartelt et al, 2022; Rachmatullah et al, 2018; Romine et al, 2018; Sbeglia & Nehm, 2019, 2020; Wingert et al, 2022), and several new insights into the structure of the scales were presented. For example, Sbeglia and Nehm (2019) found that the scales for microevolution and macroevolution are very stable within a university student sample, while the human evolution scale may be split into two sub‐dimensions (i.e., human microevolution and human macroevolution).…”