Research in developmental psychology has shown that deeply-rooted, intuitive ways of thinking, such as design teleology and psychological essentialism, impact children's scientific explanations about natural phenomena. Similarly, biology education researchers have found that students often hold inaccurate conceptions about natural phenomena, which often relate to these intuitions. In order to further investigate the relation between students' conceptions and intuitions, we conducted a study with 93 first year undergraduate students in biology. They were asked to express their level of agreement or disagreement with six misconception statements and to explain their choices in a two-tier test. Results showed a tendency for students to agree with teleological and essentialist misconceptions. However, no association was found between students' teleological and essentialist conceptions as expressed in their agreement or disagreement with the various misconception statements. Moreover, we found evidence of a variable consistency across students' answers depending on the misconception considered, which indicates that item features and contexts may have an effect on students' answers. All together, these findings provide evidence for considerable persistence of teleological and essentialist misconceptions among students. We suggest future directions for thinking, studying, and analyzing students' conceptions about biological phenomena. Educ. Sci. 2018, 8, 135 2 of 26 preconceptions that are scientifically illegitimate or simply wrong [2]. What this distinction aims at pointing out is that not all preconceptions are wrong. Quite the contrary, it is generally agreed that preconceptions should not be viewed as evidence for the lack of abilities, but rather as a tool used by people to make sense of the world around them. In this sense, preconceptions are key elements to drive conceptual change in any field of science, because new knowledge should be built upon them [3].Science education researchers have found that students often misunderstand basic biological concepts. In the case of genetics, for example, studies at various age levels have highlighted the poor understanding of biological inheritance among preschoolers of the relations and resemblances between parents and their offspring [4], the lack of consistency in explaining heredity across several tasks [5,6], or the difficulty in locating inheritance information in the cells of an organism [7]. More strikingly, it has been found that even biology teachers [8] may hold inaccurate conceptions such as genetic determinism, a conception implicitly advanced in the oversimplified presentations of gene action found in textbooks published in various countries [9]. These misunderstandings have various origins, which must be clearly identified in order to effectively address them during teaching [10].Biology undergraduates are no exception. Recent research has focused on the difficulties encountered by novice students, and the differences in understanding biological concepts ...
