Human evolution is a difficult theme, which at the same time creates intense interest. Many students and also teachers find it hard to understand. Teaching and learning about human evolution represents a challenge for them. It is important, that teachers introduce the theme in a way that pupils understand it. Understanding is hindered by previous misconceptions that teachers have to transform. For successful teaching of human evolution, a lot of knowledge is needed on the topic and misconceptions.
The curriculum assumes that pupils meet with evolution for the first time in the ninth grade of primary school. It is defined only with one operative learning objective.
Aim of our research was to test how much students of the 7th, 8th and 9th grade know about the evolutionary development of human. We also wanted to find out what kind of knowledge the pupils of the 7th and 8th grade have, that didn't deal with this theme yet and what kind pupils of the 9th grade have, that meet with theme for the first time. We also checked, if knowledge of pupils was connected with their gender and age. We carried out research at one of the primary schools in Slovenia. 185 pupils of 7th, 8th and 9th grade participated. In order to gather data, we used the method of knowledge verification with anonymous questionnaire. Questionnaire contained demographic questions (gender, grade) and 28 claims for which pupils assessed the level of agreement with the Likert Scale.
In knowledge verification pupils showed, that they did not had a satisfactory knowledge on human evolution. On average they achieved 45.9 % success. Pupils of 7th and 8th grade had less knowledge on human evolution than the 9th grade pupils. The knowledge of pupils of 7th grade was better than that of the 8th grade. We also found out that boys had better knowledge than girls and that some typical misconceptions about human evolution are occurring among pupils.
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