Undergraduates' understanding of evolution: ascriptions of agency as a problem for student learning

Gill Mitchell · Rod Bally · Margaret Inglis · David Steve Jacobs

119 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Biological Education

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Evolution and Science Education Science Education and Pedagogy Philosophy and History of Science

Abstract

This paper explores the conceptions of evolutionary processes held by a group of university students (n = 126) before receiving instruction on evolution. We focus on students' linguistic usage in order to speculate about the source of some of the conceptual problems students encounter in this area. A central problem is the tendency ofstudents to ascribe agency when attempting to describe evolutionary processes in a way that contributes to misconceptions. Whilst scientifically accepted notions of natural selection emphasise random processes of genetic mutation and allele recombination during reproduction, leading to variation in populations, many problematic notions held by students seem to suggest adaptive processes that are purposive, even conscious striving for evolutionary progress and advantage. This goal-directedness is often presented as an internal, inherent attributeof individual organisms or of populations of species (a kind of collective consciousness) or, less commonly, externally as a conscious driving force or greater design. We examine responses from undergraduate students to phenomenologically-based probes, designed to investigate undergraduate conceptions of evolution, and inwhich students select the language used to explain the process or mechanism of the phenomenon in question. We speculate about how broader world views in advertently 'leak' into scientific language, encouraging spurious goal-driven accounts of evolution, and how these frustrate appropriate concept formation. We conclude with suggestions that successful teaching of evolution will require both a greater sensitivity to the use of figurativelanguage in science, and explicit attention to how scientific theories of the world differ from other accounts.

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References

1963The Structure of Scientific Revolutions 1964The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.2003Approaches to learning 2014Probing Understanding 1990Student conceptions of natural selection and its role in evolution 1990The logic of university students' misunderstanding of natural selection 1994From down house Landlord to Brazilian high school students: What has happened to evolutionary knowledge on the way?

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