• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.352-362
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• 2006

Many misconceptions regarding biology and evolution have been reported by students prior to being exposed to a formal education program of evolution which challenged them. This study sought to investigate and to analyze the misconception formation process of evolution originating from TV animation and science books for children. Firstly, to identify TV animation's influence on students' misconceptions of evolution, a questionnaire including TV animation characters was constructed and administered to 146 elementary school students, 161 middle school students, and 156 high school students. The data collected was analyzed. Secondly, 17 science books for children were sampled and the contents related to evolution were selected and analyzed in terms of five evolutionary explanations: creationism internal will explanation, teleological explanations, explanations of use and disuse, mutation and finally, natural selection. Children have understood 'growth' and 'metamorphosis' on TV animation as 'evolution'. The processes by which characters on TV animation undergo some forms of change, which are in fact a kind of metamorphosis has often been understood as 'evolution'. Many respondents have defined evolution incorrectly as the process of growing and changing shape. On the other hand, some science books fur children contained descriptions of evolution including' mutation and finally natural selection explanation'; however, most of the science books fur children sampled in this study were written through the perspectives of alternative evolutionary views such as 'teleology view', 'internal will view', and 'use and disuse view'. It is apparent that TV animation and science books fur children influence the formation of various misconceptions regarding evolution by children.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.145-159
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• 2005

Students' alternative concepts of evolution are similar to misconcepts and disputes which scientists had in science history. The aims of this study are to analyze the elementary children's concept in evolution based on science history. Lee (2004)'s two tests were applied to 6th grade to investigate the children's evolution concepts and genetic concepts related to the historical development of the evolution concepts. The test results were analyzed in accordance with 4 stages of science history based on Lee (2004)'s method. These stages are divided to stage 1 (Before Lamarck), stage 2 (Lamarck), stage 3 (Darwin), stage 4 (After Darwin). The major results are as follows. Most of elementary school children are fixed to the stage 2. They usually do not show the consistency of evolution concepts in the three dimensional aspects such as mechanism, time, and subjects. Many children do not have concrete meaning of gene, inheritance, sexual reproduction, mutation and could not connect these concetps and process of evolution. Also, they believe the inheritance of acquired traits and spontaneous generation. Therefore it is confirmed that they still have similar misconcepts and disputes which scientists had in transition time between stage 2 and 3 and most of children already have strong Lamarckian thought acquired from daily life experience before learning about natural selection and evolution.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.505-516
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• 2003

The concept of evolution is one of the most important concepts in the learning biology. However lots of students have difficulties in understanding its mechanism because their preexisted alternative concepts interrupt in gaining the correct idea of evolution. Students usually have the Larmarkian or teleological ideas of evolution. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of an activity-centered instruction on the learner's conceptual change from misconception into the scientific concept, Darwinian one, and achievement. For the study, 162 students were sampled from a high school: 81 students for the activity-centered instruction and 81 students for traditional instruction. The result is as follows; 1) The activity-centered instruction is more effective than the traditional one in understanding the concept of Darwinian natural selection(p<.05) and in changing the students' various misconceptions of evolution into Darwinian one. 2) The activity-centered instruction concerning natural selection is more effective in their achievement(p<.01). 3) However, after both of the instructions, some students still kept the Lamarkian thoughts.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.25-39
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• 2006

Most student misconceptions about evolution are similar to misconceptions and disputes which early scientists had in science history. The aim of this study was to analyze student evolution conceptions based on science history, there by revealing for effectively teaching strategies on evolution. A test was developed according to Lee's three dimensional framework (2004) on evolution concept changes. Lee's framework had been constructed according to 4 stages of evolution concept changes in history in three-dimensional aspects such as mechanism, time, and subject: before Lamarck (stage 1), Lamarck (stage 2), Darwin (stage 3), and after Darwin (stage 4). Major results were as follows. First, the evolution conceptions of students appeared fixed to stage 2 regardless of grade. Moreover, students usually possessed Lamarckian thought and did not show consistency in evolution concepts among the three dimensional aspects of mechanism, time, and subject. Therefore, students were found to apply different conceptions of evolution to each different situation.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.747-761
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to analyze differences in the teaching practices of biology teachers according to their awareness of the importance of evolution. For this purpose, two teachers who experienced study of evolution and recognized its importance, along with two teachers with no experience in evolution education in the comparison group, were included in the sample. To observe teaching practices, two classes each on biological evolution and non-evolution were selected, recorded and transcribed. The content analyzed included the teachers' view on evolution education and teachers' evolution concepts reflected in teaching practice. As a result, the level of understanding of the teachers' evolution concept was unrelated to teachers' awareness of the importance of evolution. Instead, each teacher would not feel the need for religious beliefs or awareness of the importance of evolution to have a negative impact on the awareness of the importance of evolution. Inexperienced teachers tend to reject the retraining opportunities to recognize the importance of evolution. In addition, inexperienced teachers were only superficially aware of the evaluation and improvement of evolution presented in textbooks and curricula. In actual teaching practice analysis, inexperienced teachers' utilizing ratio of the evolution key concept was higher than that of experienced teachers. Only experienced teachers were aware of the misconceptions presented in their execution and described the causes that appear in these misconceptions. Teachers who recognized the importance of evolution were widely using the key concepts of evolution, as well as more practical in preventing the misconceptions related to evolution forms. It indicates that biology teachers who do not realize the importance of evolution in biology education need to experience explicit and practical education programs as well as instructional materials on evolution.