Undergraduate Biology Students’ Teleological and Essentialist Misconceptions

Abstract

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 ...

Implicit associations of teleology and essentialism concepts with genetics concepts among secondary school students

“…This same study also concluded that essentialist and teleological conceptions about inheritance are contrasting: traits with some function are either more heritable and less modifiable (essentialist stance) or less heritable and more modifiable (purpose-based stance). It is therefore reasonable to anticipate no correlation between the implicit association of teleology and genetics concepts and that between essentialism and genetics concepts, something also found in previous research [27,81]. Indeed this is what we found, confirming our Hypothesis 3.…”

“…Previous research has concluded that essentialist and teleological conceptions about inheritance are contrasting: traits with some function are either more heritable and less modifiable (essentialist stance) or less heritable and more modifiable (purpose-based stance) [ 58 ]. Other studies, have provided evidence that students’ teleology and essentialism conceptions in the context of biology are not related [ 27 , 81 ]. Given these findings, in our study we assumed that students’ associations between genetics and goal-directedness concepts should not be correlated with their associations between genetics and stability concepts.…”

Evolutionary Content Knowledge, Religiosity and Educational Background of Slovene Preschool and Primary School Pre-Service Teachers

“…Results for pre-service teachers' understanding of adaptation and natural selection revealed that they often use teleological (goal-directed) reasoning regarding the origin of biological adaptations. Such type of reasonings is popular among both children and adults, as they are useful for describing, explaining, and understanding what is going on in the world around us (Stern et al, 2018). Teleologically oriented thinkers are often framed in terms of change occurring as a result of particular need, but in reality, natural selection does not have a directed goal or telos (Gregory, 2009).…”

Misconceptions, conceptual pluralism, and conceptual toolkits: bringing the philosophy of science to the teaching of evolution

“…This approach treats concepts not as simple units of mental content where existing units are replaced by new ones as a person learns, but as complex and fluid systems that gradually change as parts are 2 This research has yielded a very large body of literature. Examples include: Brumby (1979;, Lawson & Thompson (1988), Bishop & Anderson (1990), Green (1990), Jiménez-Aleixandre (1992;, Settlage (1994), Demastes et al (1995), Abimbola & Baba (1996), McComas (1997), Ferrari & Chi (1998), Anderson et al (2002), Fisher & Moody (2002, Geraedts & Boersma (2006), Kampourakis & Zogza (2007;, Nehm & Reilly (2007), Nehm & Schonfeld (2008), Abraham et al (2009), Baumgartner & Duncan (2009), Burton & Dobson (2009), Cunningham & Wescott (2009), Gregory (2009), Bean et al (2010), Pazza et al (2010), Nehm et al (2010;, Van Dijk & Reydon (2010), Andrews et al (2011), Furtak (2012), Linnenbrink-Garcia et al (2012, Keskin & Köse (2015), Stern et al (2018), Kampourakis (2020a2020b). 3 I only mention these four approaches to acknowledge the work done by researchers in science education in response to the problems the general conceptual change model faces.…”