There is an emphasis on survival-based selection in biology education that can allow students to neglect other important evolutionary components, such as sexual selection, reproduction, and inheritance. Student understanding of the role of reproduction in evolution is as important as student understanding of the role of survival. Limiting…

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,…

Most of the research on student understanding of evolution by natural selection has focused on undergraduate biology courses for science majors. However, the majority of undergraduates in the United States will not enroll in a biology course for majors. In this study, we identify the extent of natural selection understanding that students acquire…

Evolution is controversial among students and religiosity, religious affiliation, understanding of evolution, and demographics are predictors of evolution acceptance. However, quantitative research has not explored the unique impact of student perceived conflict between their religion and evolution as a major factor influencing evolution…

Lack of acceptance of biological evolution, despite the overwhelming evidence that supports it, can be very problematic in higher education courses that have a strong biological basis. We investigated acceptance of biological evolution in 344 first-year Life Sciences undergraduate students across five programmes at the University of Roehampton,…

Given the importance of phylogenetic trees to understanding common ancestry and evolution, they are a necessary part of the undergraduate biology curriculum. However, a number of common misconceptions, such as reading across branch tips and understanding homoplasy, can pose difficulties in student understanding. Students also may take phylogenetic…

The main objective of this study was to characterize the acceptance of evolution among biology majors. Semi-structured interviews were carried out to track the opinions of students in relation to two aspects of evolution: (1) attitudes toward evolution in general; and (2) attitudes toward human evolution. The participants characterized their…

Adding an evolutionary perspective to anatomy teaching can enrich student learning. One way of introducing evolutionary concepts into a course is by "sneaking it in" by presenting interesting and sometimes entertaining "stories" that add anatomical detail, encourage critical thinking, and illustrate underlying evolutionary…

Threshold concepts are fundamental to a discipline and, once understood, transform students' understanding and perception of the subject. Despite the value of threshold concepts as a learning "portal" for heuristic purposes, there is limited empirical evidence of threshold crossing or achieving mastery. As a threshold concept, biological…

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…

Feedback is critically important to student learning, but the reduced frequency of assignments combined with isolated or stand-alone tasks reduces the opportunity for students to engage with feedback and use it effectively to enhance their learning. Here, I evaluate student attainment during a module consisting of eight iterated tasks where the…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the mathematical needs of biological sciences undergraduate students. Student needs were measured through a needs assessment methodology scheme that included a content analysis of peer-reviewed journals, a nationwide cross-sectional survey, and semi-structured interviews. The research question that…

Understanding of evolution is foundational to be a scientifically literate citizen because it allows analysis of socioscientific issues, such as biodiversity conservation, biotechnology applications, and human-induced climate change. Unfortunately, students who weakly understand evolution fail to understand its importance in everyday life and…

Intervention research that supported the benefit of students' construction of relevance through writing has commonly defined relevance narrowly as utility value -- perceived instrumentality of the content to the student's career goals. In comparison, we employed a broad multidimensional conception of relevance. We also investigated how the content…

We validate the Measure of Acceptance of the Theory of Evolution (MATE) on undergraduate students using the Rasch model and utilize the MATE to explore qualitatively how students express their acceptance of evolution. At least 24 studies have used the MATE, most with the assumption that it is unidimensional. However, we found that the MATE is best…