In the biological sciences, teleological ideas and language are ubiquitous. The first article by Werth and Allchin (2020) provides numerous examples of teleology at different levels of biological organization (i.e., molecules, tissues, organs, organisms, populations and ecosystems) to substantiate the claim that teleological thinking is deeply entrenched in biology and is not limited to student thinking. In particular, Werth and Allchin argue that teleological thinking is an integral part of how people (including biologists) think and talk about nature. Common to teleological imagery, conceptualizations, and language is the idea that the biological world unfolds as a part of a prescribed plan. More generally, Werth and Allchin argue that teleology is intricately bound to normative ideas about how nature should be. According to the ‘balance of nature’ metaphor, for example, nature is believed to purposefully stay in balance. Furthermore, Werth and Allchin hypothesize that teleological reasoning may have evolutionary roots. Humans evolved in a social context and attributing agency to any observed behavior in the social environment may have been advantageous. Werth and Allchin’s main argument, however, is that teleology blurs the distinction between normative and descriptive reasoning about nature: “Through teleology, nature becomes normative.” Teleology’s dark shadow, then, is the naturalizing error. More specifically, Werth and Allchin argue that the belief that nature embodies purpose can be easily used by humans to argue that human behavior, culture, and society should be modelled after nature. Teleology, thus, has cultural implications and the authors argue that educators need to address teleology in a range of biological and socio-cultural contexts.
Are students’ teleological explanations problematic? Kampourakis (2020) answers this question by arguing that it is the underlying design stance and not teleology per se that renders teleological explanations problematic. Generally, teleological explanations make reference to a final end (telos). Looking at the nature of teleological explanations in detail, Kampourakis distinguishes between two types of teleology: explanations that are based on design (design teleology) and explanations that are based on natural selection (selection teleology). In design teleology, a feature exists because of an external agents’ intention (external design teleology) or because of the intentions or needs of an organism (internal design teleology). External and internal design teleologies are clearly illegitimate in biology because there is evidence that organisms are not designed and because evolution does not follow intentions or needs. In selection teleology, an organism’s features exist because of their consequences that contribute to survival and reproduction and are thus favored by natural selection. The contribution that the heart makes to the body, for example, is to pump blood. Therefore, Kampourakis argues, it is possible to reason that a feature performing a function exists because of the benefit that this function confers to the organism and because, as a result of this, it has been favored by natural selection. For this reason, it is not necessarily wrong if students express the idea that a feature exists in order to perform a function. The core challenge in evolution education is not students’ teleological explanations, but the illegitimate assumption of external or internal design in such explanations.
Students tend to argue that the function of a trait is the only causal factor explaining why the trait came into existence without linking the function of the trait to evolutionary mechanisms. Trommler and Hammann (2020) explore the relationship between biological function and teleology. Drawing on a range of recent positions from the philosophy of biology, Trommler and Hammann argue that biologists use the notion of telos as an epistemological tool when they consider a structure or a mechanism to be functional. For example, biologists use survival and reproduction as epistemological reference points when attributing functions to structures (epistemological teleology) without making the assumption, of course, that survival and reproduction are ends inherent in nature. Ontological teleology, in contrast, is the inadequate assumption that functional structures and mechanisms came into existence because of their functionality. Means-ends analyses—as an integral part of epistemological teleology—can be misleading to students, the authors argue, because students might confuse the idea that traits function and exist for survival (adequate epistemological teleological reasoning) with the idea that traits came into existence for the purpose of functioning and maintaining survival (inadequate ontological teleological reasoning). Such ontological reasoning is illegitimate because there are no ‘ends’ in nature. To teach students that nature is not directed towards ends, Trommler and Hammann suggest that students distinguish between biological functions and mechanisms, and educators explicitly address the fact that there are no ends in nature.
Given that attempts to completely eliminate teleological thinking from evolution education are philosophically problematic and educationally counterproductive, how should biology educators approach the topic of teleology? González Galli, Peréz, and Gómez Galindo’s (2020) work seeks to answer this question. They review theoretical frameworks from science education and cognitive psychology and conclude that the most productive strategy would be to help students regulate their teleological thinking. Specifically, they emphasize that self-regulation requires both metacognitive knowledge (what we know about our thinking) and metacognitive regulation (how we control our thinking and learning). In line with prior research on metacognition, González Galli et al. advance a “metacognitive vigilance” perspective on teleology that involves three competencies: (i) knowledge of what teleology is, (ii) recognition of its multiple expressions and acceptable applications, and (iii) intentional regulation of its use. Student mastery of all three of these features emerges as an important learning outcome for evolution education. González Galli et al.’s intriguing proposal bridges the divide between theoretical and practical discussions about teleology and motivates the development and application of educational materials that foster students’ metacognitive vigilance.
Over the past several decades, “tree thinking” has emerged as an essential tool for biological reasoning and problem solving. An important but unanswered question in evolution education is whether the ways in which phylogenetics is taught influence students’ teleological perspectives about the history of life on Earth. Schramm and Schmiemann (2019) engage with this important topic and identify multiple ways in which phylogenetics instruction can inadvertently reinforce teleological thinking (e.g., presenting taxa in order of biological complexity aligns with pop-culture iconographies of ‘the great chain of being’; positioning focal taxa such as humans on the outermost edges of phylogenies reinforces notions of evolutionary goals and “development”). After identifying teleological pitfalls, Schramm and Schmiemann provide practical teaching strategies for overcoming them (e.g., altering focal taxa placement, rotating topologies, using ‘evograms’). Their paper also identifies important gaps in the literature on teleology and motivates future empirical studies on the role that phylogenetics instruction could play in altering students’ teleological thinking across biological scales (e.g., micro-, macroevolution).
The final two articles focus on young learners. Gresch (2020) presents a video-based analysis of a seventh-grade biology course on evolution. In the teaching unit, the students engage in the activity of designing an imaginary animal perfectly adapted to its environment. Later in the unit, the teacher addresses the evolution of whales and the students are encouraged to discuss the statement “evolution has no goal”. Gresch’s analyses focus on how the teacher and the students situationally address teleology. Additional interviews provide insights into how the teacher’s teaching norms and rationale relate to teaching practices regarding teleology. Using a documentary method for analyzing the videos of the lessons, Gresch (2020) argues that the teacher encourages the students to elaborate on their teleological explanations and eventually validates them. Thus, Gresch characterizes the teacher’s practices in the unit on evolution as ambiguous: Although the teacher aims at the biologically correct view of evolution, he does not clearly reject students’ teleological ideas about internal needs and goal-directed evolution because, among other reasons, he does not want to demotivate them. Teaching norms are clearly in conflict because the teacher values both student creativity—which often involves teleological reasoning—and scientifically correct ideas. The result is a confusing combination of teleological and scientific elements in the teaching unit on evolution, and the teacher offers no clear evidence that evolution has no goals. Gresch suggests that videos or transcripts of classroom interactions are a rich but underutilized resource for preservice teacher professional development.
It is widely recognized that teleological thinking emerges very early in human development, and for most biological phenomena young children prefer teleological explanations over mechanistic ones. However, few studies have empirically examined whether teleological thinking is a barrier to learning about natural selection in young children. Brown, Ronfard, and Kelemen (2020) advance work in this area in multiple ways. First, they investigate the impact of a teacher-led (but researcher-designed) storybook intervention on young children’s teleological thinking in a school setting; prior studies, in contrast, have largely been researcher-led, small-scale, and lab-based. Second, they generate a conceptual framework for characterizing teleological ideas (e.g., explicit teleology, ambiguous, elaborated) that permits careful scrutiny of whether more or less elaborated teleological ideas differentially impact learning. Third, they examine whether teleological ideas pose a greater challenge to learning natural selection compared to other preconceptions. Brown et al. report on impressive learning gains in response to the teacher-led intervention and demonstrate that teleology is much less of a barrier to learning than expected. Their work calls into question the notion that young children are only capable of learning isolated facts about evolution and motivates further studies of more mechanistically-based evolutionary concepts. The findings also raise fundamental questions about why teleological ideas appear to present much less of a barrier to learning natural selection in young children than in young adults.
