The understanding of evolution at primary school: can an intervention improve conceptual understanding?

The study aimed to describe the understanding of evolution of 10-11 year olds at primary schools in England and investigated whether their understanding can be improved when they are exposed to instruction. Evolution is a unifying concept in biology and although existing literature indicated that evolution is poorly understood by many adults, including teachers and children at secondary school, it was recently introduced in the English National Curriculum for primary school. Research is needed to clarify to what extent it is possible to improve primary school children’s understanding of this complex concept. There is very limited research with primary school children, so it is unclear whether the inclusion of evolution provides primary school teachers with a realistic aim or whether challenges will arise from its inclusion in the National Curriculum.
In order to analyse the impact of instruction on the understanding of evolution, a teaching intervention was designed using the principles of Cognitive Acceleration through Science Education (CASE). CASE aims to promote cognitive development as well as the understanding of science concepts; in this study, the CASE framework was implemented in the study of evolution. The intervention focussed on six concepts hypothesised to be core elements of the concept of evolution; variation, inheritance, adaptation, domestication, speciation and extinction.
The impact of the intervention was evaluated using an experimental design, which included a pre- and post-test and the random assignment of pupils to the intervention or the control groups. At pre- and post-test, pupils completed as assessment of cognitive development as well as an assessment that covered the six core elements involved in understanding evolution. The participants were 114 Year 6 (10-11 years old) children from two primary schools in England. They were randomly allocated to one of three groups: evolution intervention, an active control group who participated in an intervention about electricity or an unseen control group. The electricity intervention was also designed according to the principles of CASE. The unseen control group received no instruction.
It was predicted that: (1) the evolution group would perform better than the two other groups in the assessment of understanding of evolution; (2) both the evolution and the electricity group would perform better than the unseen control group in an assessment of cognitive development. Analyses of covariance showed that the evolution group performed significantly better than the unseen and electricity control groups in their understanding of evolution as measured by the assessment of the six core concepts. The quality of written justifications and the frequency of technical vocabulary used correctly in the assessment significantly increased for the evolution group when compared to the other two groups. There was no difference between the groups on the measure of cognitive development.
This study makes several methodological and empirical contributions to knowledge: a fully piloted assessment tool appropriate for children aged 10-11, a detailed study of children’s understanding of evolution and a rigorously evaluated teaching intervention designed for this age group which has educational implications for curriculum design, resources and teacher training. In addition the study makes theoretical contributions with regards to the conceptual understanding of evolution of 10-11 year olds by detailing which concepts are harder to understand than others.

Keywords: conceptual understanding
primary school
evolution
Advisor: Nunes, T
Hillier, J