Reasoning About Natural Selection: Diagnosing Contextual Competency Using the ACORNS Instrument

Nehm, Ross H.; Beggrow, Elizabeth P.; Opfer, John E.; Ha, Minsu

doi:10.1525/abt.2012.74.2.6

Cited by 130 publications

(123 citation statements)

References 16 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

113

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…For our sample of biology students, the reliability of CINS scores (measured with Cronbach's alpha) was 0.7. The second instrument that we used was the newly developed open-response ACORNS (Assessing COntextual Reasoning about Natural Selection; Nehm et al 2012). We used four isomorphic ACORNS items, standardized by familiarity: (1) How would biologists explain how a living mouse species without claws evolved from an ancestral mouse species that had claws?…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Students’ Mental Models of Evolutionary Causation: Natural Selection and Genetic Drift

Beggrow

Nehm

2012

Evo Edu Outreach

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In an effort to understand how to improve student learning about evolution, a focus of science education research has been to document and address students' naive ideas. Less research has investigated how students reason about alternative scientific models that attempt to explain the same phenomenon (e.g., which causal model best accounts for evolutionary change?). Within evolutionary biology, research has yet to explore how non-adaptive factors are situated within students' conceptual ecologies of evolutionary causation. Do students construct evolutionary explanations that include nonadaptive and adaptive factors? If so, how are non-adaptive factors structured within students' evolutionary explanations? We used clinical interviews and two paper and pencil instruments (one open-response and one multiple-choice) to investigate the use of non-adaptive and adaptive factors in undergraduate students' patterns of evolutionary reasoning. After instruction that included non-adaptive causal factors (e.g., genetic drift), we found them to be remarkably uncommon in students' explanatory models of evolutionary change in both written assessments and clinical interviews. However, consistent with many evolutionary biologists' explanations, when students used non-adaptive factors they were conceptualized as causal alternatives to selection. Interestingly, use of non-adaptive factors was not associated with greater understanding of natural selection in interviews or written assessments, or with fewer naive ideas of natural selection. Thus, reasoning using non-adaptive factors appears to be a distinct facet of evolutionary thinking. We propose a theoretical framework for an expert-novice continuum of evolutionary reasoning that incorporates both adaptive and non-adaptive factors, and can be used to inform instructional efficacy in evolutionary biology.

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Students’ Mental Models of Evolutionary Causation: Natural Selection and Genetic Drift

Beggrow

Nehm

2012

Evo Edu Outreach

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Recent studies of student responses to natural selection items found that students gave different responses depending on the context of the item (Nehm and Ha 2011;Nehm et al 2012;Nettle 2010;Opfer et al 2012;White and Yamamoto 2011). For example, undergraduate biology students said that organisms lost traits over time because they did not use them or that the organism shifted energy allocation to other more important processes, but did not use those ideas to respond to items about trait gain (Nehm and Ha 2011).…”

Section: The Relevance Of Item Context To Student Ideasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the influence of plant and animal item contexts on student response patterns to natural selection multiple choice items

2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background: Research has shown that students have a variety of ideas about natural selection that may be context dependent. Prior analyses of student responses to open-ended evolution items have demonstrated that students apply more core ideas about natural selection when asked about animals, but respond with the same number of naive ideas for plant and animal items. Other research has shown that changing an item to ask about trait loss or gain shifted the types of naive ideas applied by students in their responses. In this paper, we take up both of these findings to determine if differences exist in the types of ideas students apply to similar items with either a plant or an animal in the item stem. Results:In order to understand if students applied different ideas to plants or animals in distractor-driven multiplechoice questions, we analyzed high school biology students' responses to matched-item pairs. Dichotomous scoring revealed that students chose the correct response more often for the animal items as compared to the plant items. Chi squared analyses revealed significant differences in the distribution of student responses to matched items. For example, more students chose responses that defined animal fitness as related to their strength and plants' fitness related to its longevity. Conclusions:These results suggest that varied context of plants or animals in item stems on diagnostic assessments can provide teachers with a more complete picture of their students' ideas about natural selection prior to instruction. This is particularly important in assessments used prior to instruction; as teachers will gain greater insight into the variety of ways students think about natural selection across different types of plants and animals.

show abstract

“…Related studies have revealed unexpected trends in student responses that would not be captured by answers to multiplechoice questions. For example, students often combine incorrect and correct ideas and answer questions differently depending on their surface features [e.g., a question using bacteria vs. an animal (Nehm et al 2012)]. We will be analyzing student responses to versions of the GCA questions discussed here by assessing the frequency with which students use these persistently incorrect ideas and evaluating their explanations to help us further explore why students have these misunderstandings.…”

Section: Genetics Instructors Can Help Students By Handling Misconcepmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using the Genetics Concept Assessment to Document Persistent Conceptual Difficulties in Undergraduate Genetics Courses

Smith

Knight

2012

Genetics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

To help genetics instructors become aware of fundamental concepts that are persistently difficult for students, we have analyzed the evolution of student responses to multiple-choice questions from the Genetics Concept Assessment. In total, we examined pretest (before instruction) and posttest (after instruction) responses from 751 students enrolled in six genetics courses for either majors or nonmajors. Students improved on all 25 questions after instruction, but to varying degrees. Notably, there was a subgroup of nine questions for which a single incorrect answer, called the most common incorrect answer, was chosen by >20% of students on the posttest. To explore response patterns to these nine questions, we tracked individual student answers before and after instruction and found that particular conceptual difficulties about genetics are both more likely to persist and more likely to distract students than other incorrect ideas. Here we present an analysis of the evolution of these incorrect ideas to encourage instructor awareness of these genetics concepts and provide advice on how to address common conceptual difficulties in the classroom.

show abstract

Reasoning About Natural Selection: Diagnosing Contextual Competency Using the ACORNS Instrument

Cited by 130 publications

References 16 publications

Students’ Mental Models of Evolutionary Causation: Natural Selection and Genetic Drift

Students’ Mental Models of Evolutionary Causation: Natural Selection and Genetic Drift

Exploring the influence of plant and animal item contexts on student response patterns to natural selection multiple choice items

Using the Genetics Concept Assessment to Document Persistent Conceptual Difficulties in Undergraduate Genetics Courses

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About