Students’ understanding of the emergent processes of natural selection: the need for ontological conceptual change
The topic of natural selection presents challenges to high school students since it requires understanding of an emergent process, which is a missing schema for most students. Many interventions for teaching natural selection have limited effect in bringing about substantial ontological conceptu...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Journal Article |
| Published: |
Taylor & Francis
2020
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/79394 |
| Summary: | The topic of natural selection presents challenges to high school
students since it requires understanding of an emergent process,
which is a missing schema for most students. Many interventions
for teaching natural selection have limited effect in bringing
about substantial ontological conceptual change. This study
evaluates the effectiveness of a series of lessons to build
understanding of natural selection as an emergent process. A
conceptual change approach enabled students to develop
explanations through their transfer of understanding when
producing a series of student-generated representations,
culminating in elaborated written explanations of evolutionary
scenarios. This process was supported through small-group social
construction of understanding, Socratic questioning in whole class
discussions and teacher feedback. A quasi-experimental design
was used to compare conceptual change in experimental and
comparison grade 10 classes using pre/post tests and analysis of
written explanations. Results showed significantly greater
conceptual change in the experimental class than the comparison
class in pre/post tests and adoption of many aspects of the
scientific ontological model in written explanations. This approach
may be further developed as a method for supporting high school
students’ understanding of this difficult topic. |
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