In the 2008 Irish Curriculum, there is no operational learning objective that would relate to human evolution. In the curriculum specification published in 2015, it is stated that pupils learn about evolution through natural selection, which explains the diversity of living beings. Teachers are thus more or less left to themselves in terms of the depth and quantity of the substance in question. Since teaching human evolution is demanding, it is important that the teacher understands the social, intellectual and pedagogical aspects of teaching in order to achieve a good understanding of evolution and natural science literacy.
The aim of our research was to gain insight into the knowledge of Irish students about the human evolution in the last three years of elementary school. We wanted to find out whether their knowledge was satisfactory. We were also interested about the possible differences in knowledge between students of different schools, sexes and age.
We conducted the survey in Ireland. The survey involved 420 Irish pupils from two elementary schools. In the study, we used the Likert scale, by which students evaluated the agreement with 28 claims on human evolution and answered six questions of the optional type.
The general knowledge of Irish primary school students was poor, they achieved a total score of 32.6% on average. The students experienced the majority of problems with questions that included general knowledge about genetics and the time-schedule of events in human evolution. The lowest knowledge was related to the statement "People and Chimps developed from a common ancestor". This suggests that pupils may feel that we have developed from monkeys along a linear path and have misconceptions about these events. In the study, we found differences in the knowledge of human evolution between different schools and between the sexes. The students of the Ursuline College Sligo were more successful than the Summerhill College and girls than boys. There were no differences in the knowledge of human evolution between the differently old students.
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