Background Investigations of evolution knowledge and acceptance and their relation are central to evolution education research. Ambiguous results in this field of study demonstrate a variety of measuring issues, for instance differently theorized constructs, or a lack of standardized methods, especially for cross-country comparisons. In particular, meaningful comparisons across European countries, with their varying cultural backgrounds and education systems, are rare, often include only few countries, and lack standardization. To address these deficits, we conducted a standardized European survey, on 9200 first-year university students in 26 European countries utilizing a validated, comprehensive questionnaire, the “Evolution Education Questionnaire”, to assess evolution acceptance and knowledge, as well as influencing factors on evolution acceptance. Results We found that, despite European countries’ different cultural backgrounds and education systems, European first-year university students generally accept evolution. At the same time, they lack substantial knowledge about it, even if they are enrolled in a biology-related study program. Additionally, we developed a multilevel-model that determines religious faith as the main influencing factor in accepting evolution. According to our model, knowledge about evolution and interest in biological topics also increase acceptance of evolution, but to a much lesser extent than religious faith. The effect of age and sex, as well as the country’s affiliation, students’ denomination, and whether or not a student is enrolled in a biology-related university program, is negligible. Conclusions Our findings indicate that, despite all their differences, most of the European education systems for upper secondary education lead to acceptance of evolution at least in university students. It appears that, at least in this sample, the differences in knowledge between countries reflect neither the extent to which school curricula cover evolutionary biology nor the percentage of biology-related students in the country samples. Future studies should investigate the role of different European school curricula, identify particularly problematic or underrepresented evolutionary concepts in biology education, and analyze the role of religious faith when teaching evolution.
CreativeLab_Sci&Math is a project set by the Department of Mathematical and Natural Sciences of Polytechnic Institute of Santarém / School of Education, with the purpose of promoting innovative teaching of science and mathematics, involving students in interdisciplinary activities that connect content and processes of knowledge from both areas, using inquiry-based learning and the 6E teaching model.
Este trabalho apresenta as conceções de estudantes portugueses em formação inicial de professores sobre a evolução, a origem da vida e o ensino da evolução. Para tal, foi aplicado a 41 estudantes um inquérito adaptado a partir do questionário BIOHEAD-CITIZEN. Os resultados mostram que os estudantes possuem crenças religiosas diversificadas, sendo a maior parte deístas. Apresentam principalmente conceções evolucionistas, sendo raras as conceções criacionistas dogmáticas. As conceções evolucionistas são superiores à proporção encontrada em participantes de outros estudos e, tal outros trabalhos evidenciam, coabitam com diversas crenças religiosas. Contudo, as reflexões dos estudantes em formação inicial de professores sobre a perspetiva da origem das espécies que defendem, mostram falhas na compreensão dos mecanismos da evolução. Apesar das conceções evolucionistas serem dominantes, a maioria dos estudantes considera também que os professores devem ensinar a evolução e o criacionismo ao mesmo tempo, de modo deixar os alunos decidir sobre a posição que advogam sobre a origem das espécies. Dada a importância da evolução para a compreensão da natureza da ciência e os processos em Biologia, este trabalho evidencia a necessidade do reforço da formação sobre evolução dos futuros professores.
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.
Alfred Wegener's work on continental drift profoundly influenced the development of geology during the twentieth century. The main objective of this historical research is to explore how Wegener's hypothesis about the origin of continents and oceans influenced Portuguese and Spanish science textbooks published in the twentieth century. For this purpose, a qualitative method based on the Chevallard's concept of didactic transposition was used. The didactic transposition of the fundamentals of continental drift, including displacements forces and geographical, geophysical, geological, paleontological, biological, and paleoclimatic arguments used by Wegener to support this hypothesis, was studied in a comprehensive sample of twenty science textbooks published after the publication of Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane (Wegener 1915). The analysis of textbooks shows that the didactic transposition of continental drift was commonly present in Portuguese and Spanish textbooks beginning in the 1930s, although, with different degrees of development. Science textbooks since the 1950s presented the displacement forces of sial continental blocks proposed by Wegener, namely the centrifugal force of Earth's rotation and the attractive gravitational force that results from the interaction of the earth with the moon and sun. The geographical, geological, paleontological and biological arguments supporting continental drift were commonly addressed in many science textbooks, followed by the paleoclimatic arguments. The geophysical arguments were briefly addressed in only two textbooks. Many Portuguese and Spanish textbooks also presented critiques of Wegener's work, mainly focused on the lack of explanation for the origin and nature of forces that could move continents at the Earth's surface.
This research aimed to contribute to the history of the teaching of Darwinism in the Portuguese curriculum from 1859 to 1959. To this end, it was analysed the didactic transposition of the book On the Origin of Species for the standards and textbooks of Natural Sciences of secondary education. This study showed that some standards did not address Darwinism (Standards of 1856, 1872, 1880, 1886, 1926 and 1929), while others only prescribed the study of some subjects of Darwinism (Standards of 1889 and 1905). The standards of 1895 were the ones that addressed more Darwinists ideas in the 19th century. In the 20th century, the overall approach to Darwinism was related to the study of transformist ideas (Standards of 1919) or evolution (Standards of 1936 and 1954). However, even when the respective standards did not make that prescription, the major part of textbooks addressed the mechanisms of Darwinian evolution: adaptation, variability, growth correlations, heredity, natural selection, vital competition, geographic isolation and sexual selection.
Este artigo é de acesso livre, distribuído sob licença Creative Commons com a designação CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0, que permite a utilização e a partilha para fins não comerciais, desde que citado o autor e a fonte original do artigo.
Abstract. Using digital educational resources (DERs) in science education is an effective way of promoting students' content knowledge of complex natural processes. This work presents the usage of the digital educational resource CreativeLab_Sci&Math | Plate Tectonics, designed for exploring the PhET™ Plate Tectonics simulator, in the context of the education of pre-service teachers (PSTs) in Portugal. The performance of the PSTs was analysed based on the five tasks into which the DER was organized. Results show that the DER contributed to the successful achievement of the following learning outcomes for PSTs: describing the differences between the oceanic crust and continental crust regarding temperature, density, composition and thickness, associating the plate tectonic movements with their geological consequences, and identifying the plate tectonic movements that cause the formation of some geological structures. Results also show that PSTs considered the PhET™ Plate Tectonics simulator a contributor to their learning about plate tectonics.
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