Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

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Open Access Thesis

Keywords

College students--Iowa--Cedar Falls--Attitudes; College students--Attitudes; Evolution (Biology)--Public opinion; Iowa--Cedar Falls; Academic theses;

Abstract

Students entering a science classroom bring with them many ideas about science content and the nature of science. Some of those ideas are not congruent with current scientific explanations and can be called working conceptions. Working conceptions have the ability to impact how students respond to new information and whether or not they integrate it into their lives outside of the classroom. Identifying what working conceptions students have prior to instruction allows educators to determine how instruction should be formatted and what concepts may need extra focus. The purpose of this investigation was to determine the effectiveness of formative assessment probes in evaluating students' conceptions of evolution. As evolution continues to play an increasing relevant role in fields such as medicine, it is essential students have the knowledge needed to make informed decisions about evolution related issues. Formative assessment probes are tools which require students to explain their reasoning behind certain ideas and have been created to help identify student understanding. In this study, two probe versions were developed and each student received a set covering one of three topics: origin of variation, origin of inheritance and origin of species. Probe scores were also compared to a multiple-choice test to determine effectiveness. Additionally, this study looked at the impact of prior exposure on student understanding. No significant results were found with regard to the two different probe versions; however there was a significant difference in the scores obtained on the probes and the multiple-choice test for the two of the topics, origin of variation, origin of inheritance. Findings indicated a benefit of formative assessment probes with regard to increasing teacher awareness of students' working conceptions. Though the data set was too small to analyze the impact of prior exposure, a large number of students demonstrated working conceptions even after completing a unit on evolution.

Year of Submission

2011

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Department of Science Education

First Advisor

Lyn Countryman

Second Advisor

John Ophus

Third Advisor

Jody Stone

Comments

If you are the rightful copyright holder of this thesis and wish to have it removed from the Open Access Collection, please submit a request to scholarworks@uni.edu and include clear identification of the work, preferably with URL.

Date Original

2011

Object Description

1 PDF file (73 leaves)

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

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