Undergraduate Biology Students’ Teleological and Essentialist Misconceptions

Florian Stern,Catherine Huneault,Andreas Müller,Kostas Kampourakis,Patricia Silveira

doi:10.3390/educsci8030135

Florian Stern, Catherine Huneault + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci8030135

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Journal: Education Sciences	Publication Date: Aug 31, 2018
Citations: 21	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: University of Geneva

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.

Highlights

From our early childhood, we experientially formulate conceptions of the world which are described as preconceptions
We have selected the particular misconception statements because we considered them as covering the usual types of teleological and essentialist misconceptions that first year undergraduates would hold
97% of participants agreed with at least one misconception statement, and 49% of students agreed with at least three misconception statements. These findings indicate that these students had finished high school holding fundamental misconceptions, which in our view should be explicitly addressed in their introductory biology classes

Summary

Introduction

We experientially formulate conceptions of the world which are described as preconceptions. We often assimilate knowledge which further modifies our preconceptions, occasionally turning them into more complex but incorrect conceptions which are described as misconceptions. The distinction between preconceptions and misconceptions is important because people may restructure or reorganize their conceptions when they acquire new knowledge, this may be done in the wrong way. New knowledge (e.g., acquired at school) does not guarantee a correct understanding of concepts if the old conceptions are not properly restructured [1]. We consider the term “preconceptions” to refer to students’. Conceptions about entities and phenomena in general, and the term “misconceptions” to refer to those.

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