Do Students See the “Selection” in Organic Evolution? A Critical Review of the Causal Structure of Student Explanations

Bardapurkar, Abhijeet (2008) Do Students See the “Selection” in Organic Evolution? A Critical Review of the Causal Structure of Student Explanations. [Publications (Pre-joining)]

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Abstract

This paper critically reviews and characterizes the student's causal-explanatory understanding; this is done as a step toward explicating the problematic of evolution education as it concerns the cognitive difficulties in understanding Darwin's theory of natural selection. The review concludes that the student's understanding is fundamentally different from Darwin's, for the student understands evolutionary change as necessary individual transformation caused by the transformative action of various physical and behavioral factors. This is in complete contrast to Darwin's (and even the Darwinian's, for that matter) understanding of evolutionary change as a change caused by accumulative selection. Hence, to understand natural selection, the student has to learn to “see” how the accumulative selection causes evolutionary change.

Item Type: Publications (Pre-joining)
Authors: Bardapurkar, Abhijeet
Document Language:
Language
English
Uncontrolled Keywords: Understanding, Natural selection, Causality, Explanation, Evolution education, Darwin
Subjects: Natural Sciences > Physics
Divisions: Azim Premji University
Full Text Status: Public
Related URLs:
URI: http://publications.azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/id/eprint/4248
Publisher URL:

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