The Inability of Primary School to Introduce Children to the Theory of Biological Evolution

Natural selection proposed by Darwin and Wallace was “a truly revolutionary concept, having never before been suggested by any philosopher” and became the “cornerstone of the modern interpretation of evolution” according to (Mayr 2001, p.115). Despite the fact that natural selection had been conceived as an original idea 100 years previously and had been published in 1859, it took a very long time before it was adopted by the scientific community. The important obstacles it met with were not only religious beliefs but also secular ones, like essentialist (or typological), teleological beliefs, etc. (Mayr 1991). Natural selection was finally accepted after the 1930s, when the evolutionists realized “that none of the explanations of evolution based on the dominant way of thinking of the period--essentialism--was valid,” says (Mayr 2001, p.115). And as he notes further down, “even today many people have difficulty understanding how natural selection works. Yet when population thinking is employed, it would seem simplicity itself” (Mayr 2001, p.115).

A great number of research papers in the English literature of science education confirm Mayr’s aforementioned findings, regarding the difficulties in understanding natural selection (for a documented presentation, Demastes-Southerland et al. in Good et al. 1992; and recently, Gregory 2009).

According to various researchers, many pupils have a plethora of misconceptions about evolution, including Lamarckian misconceptions (Enderle et al. 2009; Lucas 1971; Deadman and Kelly 1978; Brumby 1979, 1984; Bishop and Anderson 1985; 1990; Greene 1990; Jiménez-Aleixandre 1992, 1996; Passmore and Stewart 2002). The misconceptions are called “Lamarckian” because “organisms can develop new adaptive characteristics in response to environmental demands -which is- a Lamarckian principle” (Samarapungavan & Wiers 1997, p. 148)¹.

Related research done in Greece (Prinou et al. 2008) has shown that even though pupils accepted biological evolution, they did not use the concept of natural selection in their explanations, but invoked pre-Darwinian explanations instead, which referred to those described by Mayr (1991; 2001). The pupils—despite the fact that they had been taught the theory of evolution ostensibly in the ninth grade—treated organisms as a unified total of almost identical individuals which acquire new traits in order to deal with the needs of the environment. Following that, organisms inherit the new traits to their offspring.

This goal-directed (teleological²) reasoning noted in the pupils’ explanations regarding the origin of biological adaptations, proves to be the predominant one used by pupils of various ages (Abrams et al. 2001; Southerland et al. 2001) but also by educated adults, well-disposed towards the theory of evolution (Abraham-Silver and Kisiel 2008 from research done in Great Britain, Canada, and Australia; Evans et al. 2010 from research done in the United States). Evans et al. (2010) also found that the individuals taking part in their research (i.e., visitors of a natural history museum), despite accepting evolution, had no understanding of natural selection. More than half of them were described by the researchers as novice naturalistic reasoners because they used more the “goal-directed,” “need-based” adaptation as the mechanism of evolutionary change rather than natural selection.

A recent study exploring students’ explanations about evolutionary relations depicted in noncladogenic diagrams, Catley et al. (2010) also found that the students used the teleological (purpose-driven) conception of evolution in which organisms change in order to cope better with a new environment and as a result they turn into a new species.

The finding that conceptual biases which hinder the understanding of natural selection exist since early childhood is a common one (Samarapungavan and Wiers 1997; Kelemen 1999; Bloom and Weisberg 2007; Shtulman and Schulz 2008; Sinatra et al. 2008; Gregory 2009).

In one of their studies about children’s ideas on the origin of the species, Samarapungavan and Wiers (1997) found that most children used consistent explanatory frameworks which briefly were: (a) the pure essentialist framework (according to which “species have always existed and are immutable”), (b) the dinosaur essentialist framework (according to which in the beginning the earth was populated by the dinosaur ancestors of modern species which underwent micro-adaptational changes in response to a changing environment), (c) the spontaneous generation framework (according to which species originate through spontaneous generation from plant matter or soil), (d) the creationist framework, and (e) the Lamarckian framework. The common denominator in which all five consistent frameworks differ from New-Darwinian theory, is their neglect of the phenomenon of within species variability. “The five frameworks treat within species variation as uninteresting or trivial phenomenon”, Samarapungavan and Wiers (1997, p.168) point out.

Also, according to Sinatra et al. (2008), children have essentialist, teleological, and—very closely related—intentional biases that make learning about evolution very challenging, because, according to them, evolution does not “work.” With reference to Gelman (2003), the writers say that “children’s essentialism is the tendency to believe that things belong to categories because they have an underlying nature that we cannot see, but which sorts their basic identity” (Sinatra et al. 2008, p. 190). Also, according to their teleological reasoning and the closely related intentionality constraints, children have the inclination to think that “events are not only purposeful but that may be caused by an intentional agent” (Sinatra et al. 2008, p.191).

Nevertheless, Evans (2005; 2008) found that children (about ten years old and from non-fundamentalist religious communities)—particularly children who are exposed to evidence of metamorphosis, adaptive variation within species, or fossils—may be capable of accepting that major evolutionary changes occur in organisms and that a species of animal could have evolved from earlier and very different species of living being. However, they probably have many misconceptions about evolution.

Hatano and Inagaki (1997, p.119–120) reckon that “because naive biology assumes living things, but not non-living things, to be able to adjust to their ecological niche or ways of life, children are ready to accept any biological species gradual adaptive changes over generations, and thus to form a version of the Lamarckian idea of evolution.” Hatano and Inagaki (1997, p. 120) also note that “as children learn these and other scientific conceptions in school biology, their ways of understanding the biological world may in fact change. In other words not only is school biology learned meaningfully by being assimilated into existing knowledge of naïve biology, but also as claimed by Vygotsky (1978), it reorganizes naïve biology by adding, say, physiological mechanisms and the evolutional perspective, so that the reorganized body of knowledge can effectively be used as the basis for answering a wider variety of biological questions.”

As a result, it would be interesting to ascertain if and how school education offered to children today, contributes to the reorganization of their naïve biology; in other words, whether concepts of the theory of evolution are systematically introduced during primary education. To that purpose, we posed the two following research questions.

The first research question focuses on the directives given to the teachers by the official state, as stated in the curricula and school textbooks. The question is: How is biological evolution presented—from the past to the present day—in the official documentation of school education, namely the primary science curricula and the textbooks of Greece? Do these primary curricula and textbooks contain evolutionary concepts or prerequisite concepts of the evolutionary theory and, if they do, how are said concepts presented?

The second research question focuses on the teachers who, on one hand are the mediators between scientific knowledge and school knowledge and, on the other, are considered reliable and trustworthy individuals by their pupils, who usually greatly influence their views (Bloom and Weisberg 2007).

The questions are: (a) what are the conceptions held by primary school teachers of the concepts of evolutionary theory which they have to teach? (b) How well do they know and understand the theory; what is their opinion of their training in evolutionary theory and of their need to be trained in it?

In this paper, we present and combine two separate studies: one referring to Greek primary school science curricula and textbooks and one referring to Greek primary school teachers. This is done in an effort to achieve a fuller and better understanding of the subject under research. Nota bene, that this is the first time that such a study has been carried out in our country. Previous studies done in Greece were researching the various factors that influence the teaching of the evolutionary theory only in secondary education (Prinou et al. 2008).

The study has shown that until 2000, both in curricula and textbooks for primary education, references to concepts relevant to the evolution of the species were very limited and fragmented. The sentence in the textbook saying that “organisms that appeared later—among whom is man—are more perfect” was a widespread misconception which “can be traced back to the ancient belief that organisms had an innate capacity for improvement, for steadily becoming more perfect” (Mayr 2001, p.150).

In curricula and textbooks used after 2000 to date, the references to evolution are even fewer.

So, while evolution is virtually nonexistent in both the previous and today’s curricula and textbooks (of both teachers and pupils), “adaptation” of plants and animals is mentioned but in a highly problematic way. Despite the fact that one of the aims of the section “adaptation of plants and animals,” found in a teacher’s textbook of an earlier period, was the “Introduction to the concepts of evolution and natural selection,” the meanings of the concepts were confused. The meaning of the word “adaptation” within the framework of evolutionary theory was not given at all.

A similar confusion appears when trying to understand the concept of adaptation in today’s curricula and textbooks. “Adaptation” is not explained at all in the teachers’ textbooks of the lower grades, probably because the explanation is considered superfluous or self-evident, given that the word is used in everyday language as well, or because the writers think that the meaning of adaptation in evolution is the same as the one used in everyday language, or as the meaning the word has in physiology⁴.

So in the corresponding pupils’ textbooks (pupils of the lower grades), the authors, by the use of a multitude of simplistic phrasings in their explanations, present “adaptation” as an active process undertaken by the organisms in order to achieve their goal.

In the teachers’ textbooks of higher grades, as already shown, there is a mention of the concept of natural selection, without adequate explanations. But in the pupils’ textbooks, “adaptation” is equaled to the acquirement of characteristic features by organisms, and it implied that adaptation is a process realized by every animal so that it survives in its habitat.

Given such ideas, it is obvious that the teleological viewpoint is used by the school itself (via the texts in the textbooks), in order to explain the origin of the features in organisms. Organisms (which are presented as identical and as if represented by one characteristic type) do change but by “adapting,” that is, by acquiring the desired features in order to survive. The concept of the existence of variation among individuals of the same species (a prerogative for the future understanding of natural selection) is nowhere to be found—in either curricula or textbooks--during the whole six years of primary education. These only appear when pupils are taught “natural selection” (i.e., at the end of the ninth grade in secondary school).

Thus, while the study of “teachers’ conceptions” shows that they accept biological evolution and especially that of humankind and that half of them accept the common origins of organisms, a much smaller percentage knows how to use natural selection.

The acceptance of a “common origin” by the educators does not mean that they also understand the Darwinian mechanism, as ascertained by the study of Evans et al. (2010) also. The mere mention of natural selection in the teachers’ textbooks for higher grades is not enough to equip them with a clear understanding of natural selection.

Indeed, it was evident that a minor percentage of teachers actually interprets the origin of adaptations in a scientific way. The ways by which the majority of the teachers replied (to questions for which they had to use natural selection without its being suggested), refer us back to the aforementioned ambiguous, vague, and unclear explanations mixed with teleological connotations in the textbooks, which, notably, are the only ones published and made available to teachers.

If the curricula and the textbooks had different content, the views of the educators and consequently those of their pupils would be different as well.

For the time being, the teachers “trapped,” as they are, in these textbooks, have formed a “novice naturalistic” reasoning (as characterized by Evans et al. 2010) which is similar to the intuitive, goal-directed explanations the pupils offer too. It is obvious that, under these circumstances, no effort is made to question or destabilize the intuitive teleological reasoning of the pupils, and thus the same is carried intact to the next levels of education. Naturally, it also influences the teaching of biological subjects in superior grades.

Finally, from all the aforementioned findings, it is evident that primary education in our country is inadequate to introduce the theory of evolution of organisms to children.

But is the inadequacy of teaching the concepts of evolution in primary education just a “Greek” phenomenon or is it seen in other countries as well? Judging by the following international publications on the subject, it is somehow found in other countries too.

According to a joint letter of the British Humanist Association (supported by many great scientific personalities of Britain) about the teaching of evolution in primary education in Great Britain (June 2010), evolution “is a key concept that children should be introduced at an early stage.” Nevertheless, “there is no requirement for primary schools to teach evolution and natural selection at all, since this was dropped from legislation in the final days of the last parliament, and the new government has signaled its intention not to proceed with it. This means that children may first encounter the theory of evolution only when they are teenagers, when it is included mandatorily and for the first time in the secondary science curriculum.” And according to J. Williams—a specialist in science education who signed the letter, —“misconceptions set in primary will be very difficult, if not impossible, to correct 10 years later” (published in The TES on 3 July, 2009).

Publications that appeared in the 1980s and 1990s (e.g., Κeown 1988, Fisher in Good et al. 1992) called attention to the necessity for the construction of a notional understructure for evolution in the curricula and textbooks of primary education in the United States. When Jeffery and Roach (1994) reviewed American textbooks for primary education, they ascertained that the useful understructures of evolution “are not developed throughout the elementary years and thus do not provide the strong framework necessary for students to construct a scientific understanding of evolution” (p. 515). Also, in a recent publication, Wagler (2010) notes the absence of biological evolution from the national standards of the United States for grades Κ-4 and considers this to affect the students’ “educational success when they are introduced to the complex interactions of organisms and environments” and their “overall long-term biological development, i.e., knowledge and application of that knowledge.”

Simultaneously, a series of publications (e.g., Asghar et al. 2007 in Canada, Nadelson & Nadelson 2009 in the United States) shows various difficulties that primary education teachers have teaching evolution.

It is possible that the aforementioned “voids” in primary education, either on the level of curricula and textbooks or of the educators themselves, affect the difficulties that exist in the learning of evolution in older ages as well. For example, it appears that the teaching of evolution only in secondary education is not enough to make pupils adopt anti-intuitive reasoning and avoid any reference to “need” in their evolutionary explanations. But that remains to be seen by applying in practice a long-term program which will train the pupils from a young age to hold an evolutionary attitude towards organisms. And only then shall we be able to ascertain whether we’ll encounter the same difficulties we have described in learning about evolution by natural selection (see Review of the Literature).

International literature is full of fruitful proposals which, if carried out, may correct the “errors” and fill the “voids” that exist in curricula and textbooks relative to teaching the concepts of evolution in primary education and at the same time, help the educators complete their education. Such proposals are found in, for instance, the publications of Fail 2008; Nadelson et al. 2009; Chanet and Lusignan 2009, Eldredge & Eldredge 2009, Wagler 2010, as well as in the tool Benchmarks for Science Literacy (2008) and the Website Understanding Evolution, 2010.

It is known that, in various countries, the teaching of evolution in secondary education meets with difficulties (Κim & Nehm 2010) evidently affecting its introduction to primary education. But in Greece in particular, we cannot say that there are today “widely publicized anti-evolution movements whose persistent efforts have resulted in state standards that de-emphasize the role in evolution” as there are in the United States (Evans et al. 2010, p.327). It is true that fanatic religious circles, mainly in the past, did openly or covertly react against the teaching of evolution and mainly the origin of humankind (Krimbas 2009). But at least today, this subject does not touch the majority of the rest of the citizens and the educators in particular, who, within the framework of science classes, are the only ones qualified to introduce scientific theories in general and the theory of evolution in particular. What needs to be dealt with is the ignorance of the matter. Given appropriate changes in the structure and content of curricula and textbooks, and appropriate programs for the education and training of teachers, etc., we could introduce the subject of evolution in primary education, a fact that would probably result in the timely and systematic handling the aforementioned anti-intuitive notions of pupils.