Every pupil enters the classroom with prior knowledge. This is the knowledge that a pupil acquired in school or at home. The pupils with more prior knowledge can also have many misconceptions which can lead to a negative learning transfer. Misconceptions are knowledge that is in contrast with scientifically accepted facts. Even though according to international studies Slovenian pupils are above average as to meeting biology and science objectives, the studies up to this point show that this is not true when it comes to meeting objectives about knowing the evolution of man. Evolutionary biology is a complex and sometimes difficult scientific discipline, presenting a challenge to both pupils and teachers. In the Slovenian curriculum, the evolution of man only appears in the 9th grade of elementary school, where only one learning objective about this topic can be found.
The objective of our study is to find out what is the extent of prior knowledge of pupils in the 8th grade of elementary school about the evolution of man, and what misconceptions they have about it. We also wanted to establish whether this knowledge is connected to the pupils' gender and their school. In addition, we researched whether pupils from different school have the same misconceptions or not. The study included 230 pupils from three elementary schools. Our data-collection instrument was an online questionnaire. It was chosen due to the fact that, at the time of our study, an epidemic of Sars-CoV-2 was declared in Slovenia. Our study showed that pupils have an acceptable prior knowledge about the evolution of man. We also proved that despite having a good general knowledge about the evolution of man, 8th-grade pupils have common misconceptions about this topic. Pupils had the most misconceptions about the timing and localization regarding the evolution of modern man and Neanderthal.
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