Evolution content in school textbooks: data from eight European countries

Andreas Panayides, Xana Sá-Pinto, Evangelia Mavrikaki, Duur K. Aanen, Sara Aboim, Bento Cavadas, Radka Marta Dvorakova, Marcel Eens, Eliska Filova, Tanja Gregorčič, Nausica Kapsala, Mathijs Nieuwenhuis, Lino Ometto, Penelope Papadopoulou, Rianne Pinxten, Giulia Realdon, Nuno Ribeiro, José Luis Coelho da Silva, Bruno Sousa, Gregor TorkarKonstantinos Korfiatis

Resultado de pesquisarevisão de pares

1 Citação (Scopus)

Resumo

Background: Evolution is a unifying theme in biology and its understanding is essential to address sustainability problems. However, many people across the world do not understand evolution. Textbooks are among the most widely used educational resources and the way they depict evolution may greatly impact students’ scientific literacy in evolution. In this paper we investigate which evolution concepts are addressed in European science textbooks, from the 1st to the 9th grade. A content analysis using the ‘Framework for the Assessment of school Curricula on the presence of Evolutionary concepts”, was performed on textbooks from eight European countries: Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal and Slovenia. At least two experienced coders per country independently analysed the texts, images and activities, discussed the results and reached a final consensus. Results: Our results show that textbooks lack or rarely address concepts considered important for evolution understanding, notably the processes driving evolution and their daily life implications, limiting opportunities for education for sustainability. Conclusions: We recommend that science textbooks emphasize evolution and its processes since the first school years. This recommendation is particularly relevant for the analysed textbooks from Cyprus and Belgium, that cover less than 45% of the concepts important to evolution literacy.

Idioma originalInglês
Número do artigo11
RevistaEvolution: Education and Outreach
Volume17
Número de emissão1
DOIs
Estado da publicaçãoPublicadas - 9 jul. 2024

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