Objective: To determine the impact of an educational program for primary schools that explored the biodiversity of tomato, by promoting science and sensory education with three distinct varieties of it, in the acceptance of vegetables. Design: A randomized controlled study in which children were exposed to the educational program (intervention group) or remained in the class, as usual (control group). The educational program consisted of three sessions where children explained the observed differences between the three varieties of tomato and individual perceptions of their flavors based on sensory-based food education and by planning and implementing experiments to explain those differences. We tested the effects on both children’s willingness to try and their liking for tomato, and for lettuce and cabbage to study the carry-over effect, compared with the control group (Mann-Whitney U test; p < 0.05). Setting: The study took place in public primary schools in Porto, Portugal. Participants: Children in the third grade (8-13-year-old children) (n 136) that were randomly assigned to intervention or control group. Results: Children in the intervention group reported significant increases in their willingness to try and liking for tomato compared to the control group (p < 0.05), but not for lettuce and cabbage (p > 0.05). Conclusions: These results highlight the potential for fostering children’s acceptance of a vegetable by exploring biodiversity through science education. Further work may clarify the effects of exploring biodiversity on the consumption of vegetables and establish whether the results are stable over time and replicable across contexts and populations.
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.
While several researchers have suggested that evolution should be explored from the initial years of schooling, little information is available on effective resources to enhance elementary school students’ level of understanding of evolution by natural selection (LUENS). For the present study, we designed, implemented, and evaluated an educational activity planned for fourth graders (9 to 10 years old) to explore concepts and conceptual fields that were historically important for the discovery of natural selection. Observation field notes and students’ productions were used to analyze how the students explored the proposed activity. Additionally, an evaluation framework consisting of a test, the evaluation criteria, and the scoring process was applied in two fourth‐grade classes (N = 44) to estimate elementary school students’ LUENS before and after engaging in the activity. Our results show that our activity allowed students to link the key concepts, resulting in a significant increase of their understanding of natural selection. They also reveal that additional activities and minor fine‐tuning of the present activity are required to further support students’ learning about the concept of differential reproduction.
While several researchers have suggested that evolution should be explored from the initial years of schooling, little information is available on effective resources to enhance elementary school students’ level of understanding of evolution by natural selection (LUENS). For the present study, we designed, implemented and evaluated an educational activity planned for fourth graders to explore concepts and conceptual fields that were historically important for the discovery of natural selection. Observation field notes and students’ productions were used to analyse how the students explored the proposed activity. Additionally, an evaluation framework consisting of a test, the evaluation criteria and the scoring process was applied in two fourth-grade classes to estimate elementary school students’ LUENS before and after engaging in the activity. Our results suggest that our activity allowed students to effectively link all of the key concepts in the classroom and produced a significant increase in their LUENS. These results indicate that our activity had a positive impact on students’ understanding of natural selection. They also reveal that additional activities and minor fine-tuning of the present activity are required to further support students’ learning about the concept of differential reproduction. We also observed a low level of teleological predictions for both pre- and post-tests.
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