Previous research has shown that students employ intuitive thinking when understanding scientific concepts. Three types of intuitive thinking--essentialist, teleological, and anthropic thinking--are used in biology learning and can lead to misconceptions. However, it is unknown how commonly these types of intuitive thinking, or cognitive…

Do people think about genetic inheritance as a deterministic or probabilistic process? Do adults display systematic biases when reasoning about genetic inheritance? Knowing how adults think about genetic inheritance is valuable, both for understanding the developmental endpoint of these concepts and for identifying biases that persist even after…

The purpose of the drawing method is to reveal the hidden beliefs, attitudes, knowledge and understanding of students without being dependent on words. It is more useful than other techniques in that it is easy to apply and a lot of data can be obtained with a drawing. Some misconceptions can be revealed by asking students to describe or…

Even though genetics has been implemented in biology curricula at secondary schools for decades, reports repeatedly indicate that students still hold various misconceptions about this topic. To successfully target these misconceptions, we need to know their nature and origin. We aimed to investigate these properties in the Czech educational system…

Considering both the ecological niches of fungi and the different benefits they provide to humans, it is expected that students have a high level of scientific knowledge about living things in this kingdom. In the study, it was aimed to examine the learning of secondary school students about living things in the fungi kingdom. The research, which…

Vaccines are an important and societally relevant biology topic, but it is unclear how much college biology students know about how vaccines work and what inaccurate ideas they have about that process. Therefore, we asked more than 600 college students taking biology courses at various levels to explain, "How does a vaccine work?" in a…

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has underscored the importance of mRNA vaccines. The mechanism for how such vaccines work is related to the core biology topic of the central dogma, which students often misunderstand despite its importance. Therefore, we wanted to know whether students can apply their biology knowledge of central…

This study aimed to comprehensively examine the articles in which multi-tier concept diagnostic tests, which are among the alternative assessment methods frequently used in recent years to identify misconceptions, were used in biology education between 2000 and 2022. For this purpose, systematic review steps were followed and summarized in the…

This study examines what prior knowledge and misconceptions about evolutionary theory students bring with them into an introductory biological anthropology course. One hundred and fifty-three students completed short, anonymous surveys about evolution on the first day of class before any content was discussed. Of a possible seven points, the…

Here, we present a ten-year assessment of core concept retention, with an emphasis on evolution, by senior biology majors at a small, private liberal arts college. For concepts that are regularly revisited throughout the biology curriculum, we found that knowledge retention was robust. However, for concepts that are encountered only during the…

The United States still has one of the lowest evolution acceptance rates in the world. Biology educators have been diligent in their methods to increase evolution acceptance and knowledge, with much success. However, misconceptions still arise through education, textbooks, and even social and religious settings that may influence our citizens' low…

Biology, known as the science of life in its most general definition, is one of the branches of science closest to individuals due to the subjects it contains. Therefore, knowing the concepts related to biology correctly is important for the sustainability of the learning process. In this study, it was aimed to determine the conceptual perceptions…

The global threat of antibiotic-resistant infections has resulted in health organizations compiling an Antibiotic Stewardship Program (ASP), in which the education of current and future medical prescribers and farmers is central to the preservation of current and future antimicrobial treatments. The purpose of this study was to assess and compare…

The aim of this study is to determine the students' misconceptions about the digestive system. In this quantitative research, the study group comprised totally 259 sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade students. The data were collected through a three-tier diagnostic test and analyzed in terms of scientific knowledge, the lucky guess, lack of…

Misconception is often experienced by students who study abstract subjects. If this misconception continues to be maintained then the next concept will be wrong and become a difficulty in the learning process, even if a teacher will continue the wrong concept to their students. Therefore, the researchers tried to analyze the misconceptions that…