Following Darwin's footsteps: Evaluating the impact of an activity designed for elementary school students to link historically important evolution key concepts on their understanding of natural selection
Creators
- 1. University of Aveiro
- 2. Polytechnic Institute of Porto
- 3. Centro de Investigação em Didática e Tecnologias na Formação de Formadores*
- 4. University of Lisbon
- 5. University of Coruña*
- 6. University of Athens*
- 7. University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro
Description
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. --
Notes
For all the items except LUENS, a value of 1,00 means present and a value of 0,00 means absent from that students' answers. Missing data (items for which absence or presence could not be ensured, there was no agreement between the two coders, or, in case of LUENS, could not be estimated) is represented by "?". For LUENS, the presented values correspond to the sum of the scores attributed for each rubric item identified in that answer, regarding both predictions and corresponding justifications. A score of 1 was attributed to the items "fittest", "resource availability" and "differential survival", a score of 2 was attributed to "differential reproduction" and a score of zero was attributed to all other items.
Funding provided by: Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia
Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001871
Award Number: UID/CED/00194/2019
Funding provided by: European Research Council
Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000781
Award Number: COMPCON, GA 725419
Funding provided by: Ministerio de Ciência, Innovación y Universidades
Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100014440
Award Number: Project PGC2018-096581-B-C22
Funding provided by: Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia
Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001871
Award Number: I.P.2020.05634.BD
Funding provided by: COST Action*
Crossref Funder Registry ID:
Award Number: CA17127
Funding provided by: COST Action
Crossref Funder Registry ID:
Award Number: CA17127
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Additional details
Related works
- Is cited by
- 10.22541/au.161439396.60891973/v1 (DOI)