The master's thesis focuses on the topic of human evolution. It is an important and topical subject in the field of biology, which, according to research, is poorly treated in both primary and secondary schools. The work is divided into a theoretical and a research part. The first part deals with the question of why human evolution is so important and what are the main problems encountered when teaching this subject (misconceptions, limited number of school lessons, and the problem of creationism). Some solutions are presented mentioned by different authors as measures to overcome the complex problems related to human evolution. In the empirical part, we have conducted a quantitative survey using an anonymous online questionnaire. The main purpose of the master's thesis was to investigate the knowledge of 1st and 4th grade students of selected high schools in Primorska region about human evolution, what their misconceptions about human evolution are and how they accept unscientific concepts in this area. We found that the knowledge of the students was satisfactory. The male students were slightly more successful than the female. The 4th year students also showed slightly better results than the 1st year students. Even with the chapter related to creationism, students had no major problems in understanding evolution. There were differences between the high schools, but they were minor. The results were compared with the results of other Slovenian and foreign authors who have researched similar topics. Consequently, we can compare the knowledge of students from Primorska and other regions of Slovenia and thus get a general picture of the shortcomings and problems as well as the positive aspects that occur in the topic on human evolution at the secondary school level. All these results will be able to support the work of teachers and those involved in educational planning for secondary and primary schools in the future.
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