This study investigates how Grade 12 secondary school students in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) perceive and respond to teaching and learning on evolution. A mixed-methodology approach including a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews was used. The study shows that Saudi students are aware of the great significance that has been…

The purpose of the present study was to reveal the effectiveness of the Nature of Science (NOS) embedded in Argument-Driven Inquiry (ADI) instructional method on pre-service science teachers' (PSTs) content knowledge and self-efficacy in evolution theory. The study was a mixed-method study in which the qualitative data collection and analysis was…

Contrary to the situation at primary, middle, and secondary school levels, university science courses provide students with very few opportunities to reflect upon the nature of science (NOS). The first goal of this study was to provide evidence that the co-construction of evolutionary trees, an important component of university biology education,…

Evolution is one of the most controversial scientific issues worldwide, mainly because of the presumed conflict with religion, which also arises in school biology classes. Here, we surveyed biology teachers from different Jewish sectors in Israel about their experiences teaching evolution and their perspective on relating to students' religious…

Teaching the theory of evolution has often faced various challenges, including teachers' internal conflict between the theory of evolution and their personal religious beliefs. This multiple case study examined the perceptions of and approaches to teaching evolution of six Indonesian Muslim biology teachers who were working in three different…

Due to the controversies surrounding the topic of evolution among religious and non-religious people alike, the treatment of biological evolution in education--both teaching and learning--is a potential minefield. The goal of this study was to probe the insights of Israeli stakeholders in education regarding the revision of the Israeli science and…

The purpose of this study was to explore science teachers' conceptions about micro-and macro-evolutionary processes. In this study, a case study was employed to compare and contrast novice and experienced middle school science teachers' evolution conceptions. The data were collected using four micro-and macro-evolutionary scenarios alongside…

The theory of evolution is the backbone of the biological sciences. Arguably, this is the reason why evolution education is an extensively investigated issue in several countries around the world. Little is known, however, about the views of university students in Colombia. Here, we report on 7 years of data generated by a three-question anonymous…

Evolution is a difficult topic to teach; teachers admit not having enough knowledge of evolution and they face student opposition to learning evolution, especially based on religious grounds. Teachers are therefore motivated to gain knowledge in the field of evolution. We conducted a 30-hour evolution teacher training course, which included…

The integrative role that Evolutionary theory plays within Biology is recognised by most scientific authors, as well as in governmental education policies, including Brazilian policies. However, teaching and learning evolution seems problematic in many countries, and Brazil is among those. Many factors may affect teachers' and students'…

Student interest in plants is lacking. Therefore, we investigated potential drivers of situational interest in cultivated plants and interactions between different dimensions of interest, i.e. topic, context and learning activity. A total of 462 high school students (14-17 years of age) rated two sets of questionnaire items combining eight plants…

Evolutionary theory constitutes the overarching concept in biology. There is hardly any other concept that is more complex, and causes more difficulties in learning and teaching. One instructional approach in optimizing the learning of complex topics is to use worked examples combined with self-explanation prompts that fit to the prior knowledge…

We present quantitative results for the doctoral thesis of the first-named author of this article. The objective was to recommend and test a teaching proposal for core knowledge of evolutionary biology in secondary education. The focus of the study is "Problem cores in teaching". The "Weaving evolutionary thinking" teaching…

Despite the importance of the theory of evolution to scientific knowledge, a number of misconceptions continue to be found among teachers and undergraduate students. The aim of the present study was to describe and characterise knowledge about evolution among 120 freshman undergraduate students of two natural sciences programmes (environmental…

With evolutionary biology relatively recently introduced into the South African school curriculum, the need arose to explore practising teachers' knowledge of the subject. A number of anticipated as well as unanticipated cognitive and affective barriers to the understanding of evolutionary biology were identified from a questionnaire with…