Secondary Teachers’ Predictions of Students’ Natural Selection Alternative Conceptions

• In Event: Perspectives on Students

Abstract

Being familiar with students’ evolutionary alternative conceptions is a vital first step towards conceptual change and can serve to enhance a teacher’s pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). Gaining such knowledge would create a framework to which instruction could be tailored, enabling teachers to choose activities more carefully and efficiently. Using a natural selection assessment, we made an initial attempt at gauging one of PCK’s components, knowledge of students’ pre-scientific conceptions, with three secondary biology teachers within the same science department. While these three teachers were rather consistent in their content knowledge, their knowledge of how their students would respond on the assessment was much more dissimilar. These findings point to a limited awareness of alternative conceptions.

Authors

• Margaret M. Lucero, The University of Texas - Austin

• Anthony Petrosino, The University of Texas - Austin