Teachers teaching misconceptions: a study of factors contributing to (US) high school biology students’ acquisition of biological evolution-related misconceptions
Research has revealed that high school students matriculate to college holding misconceptions related to biological evolution. These misconceptions interfere with students’ abilities to grasp accurate scientific explanations and serve as fundamental barriers to understanding evolution. Because the scientific community regards evolution as a vital part of science education, it is imperative that students’ misconceptions are identified and their sources revealed.
The purpose of this study was to identify the types and prevalence of biological evolution-related misconceptions held by high school biology teachers and their students, and to identify those factors that contribute to student acquisition of such misconceptions, with particular emphasis given to the role of the teacher.
Those in Australia interested in the debate about education, equity and long-term social mobility within societies would benefit from reviewing the latest from the Sutton Trust.
It is interesting to place the work of the Gonksi Review in the context of this discussion.
My thoughts on Gonski can also be found here. A very soggy Gonski [as predicted]
Current [and somewhat favourable] comparative analysis of Australia within the four countries should also be cautiously considered within the context of the trends we are are now seeing; greater inequity, and concentration of disadvantage. This should give policy-makers and parents alike, considerable pause…
The Social Mobility Summit found:
Despite being similarly unequal, the four major Anglophone nations have different social mobility levels, with the UK and US significantly less mobile than Canada or Australia.
The Sutton Trust in the U.K. [Founded by Sir Peter Lampl in 1997] held a conference recently [May] presenting the latest international research findings on social mobility, educational achievement, and other key characteristics of the four major Anglophone countries – the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and Australia. The report was jointly sponsored by the Sutton Trust and Carnegie of New York, it is the latest in a continuing line of work investigating international comparisons of mobility.
It is interesting to note in our current domestic debate how positively others view our educational outcomes. Of course no single comparison is definitive, or necessarily useful, but the perspective of others can often add value to such doctrinaire debates.
Underachievement Comparison – Social Mobility Summit 2012
Those interested in such research would find the work of the Sutton Trust and the recent Social Mobility Summit very useful.
On a warm, almost balmy evening in Melbourne, I had the pleasure of attending the inaugural [and very heavily subscribed] Professorial Lecture by Professor John Hattie, entitled “The Future of Measurement – making learning visible” as part of the Dean’s Lecture series at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education.
Returning to the university grounds is always a pleasure and the 1888 courtyard did not disappoint. The work of the Univeristy of Melbourne in the field of education has always been innovative and often challenging the status-quo. The work of the Graduate School, in general, and that of centres such as the Centre for Research on Education Systems (formerly CPELL), are always at the fore-front in their fields.
Adding once again to the impressive depth and breadth of research talent, the Dean of the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, Professor Field Rickards, introduced and welcomed Professor Hattie, who has recently been appointed as the Director of The Melbourne Education Research Institute (MERI) which is the umbrella agency for research activities of the Graduate School of Education.
The focus of Professor Hattie’s presentation was the evolution of testing and measurement techniques and the opportunities that new developments in technology bring to the development of measurement and feedback systems for classroom teachers.
As someone that has a healthy, constructive and professional suspicion of schools and teaching, I view the work of John Hattie as very important.
He posited that we are at a cusp in understanding, technology and delivery that would allow a new regime of online and other feedback systems, encouraging teachers to genuinely and routinely moderate and explicitly apply what they learn about the progress of students they teach.
This can be near-or-real-time, moderated, researched based and most importantly,
Dean's Lecture Dec 7 2011
replicable between class-room teachers, across schools and even systems. This has the potential to profoundly effect what we understand is possible in a classroom and school.
I have no-doubt it would also fundamentally reform teacher-education.
The abstract for the lecture stated:
Measurement invades so many aspects of our life, particularly in our schools. Indeed schools are awash with test data. Most of these tests look like those of 50 years ago. During the past ten years a new revolution has been occurring leading to fascinating new ways to think about measurement. These include the use of technologies, changing conceptions of how to assess the qualities of tests, the measurement of progress, assessing cognitive processes and the globalisation of measurement.
This lecture will outline this revolution, showing how many of these advances can be included in a reporting engine accessible to teachers. These assessment reports can make learning more visible to the student and the teacher.
Professor Hattie referred to his vast research [those of you who have followed my posts over the years will be aware of these] on student learning and his major meta-analyses on influences on achievement.
Those interested in student achievement, teacher effectiveness and the mysteries of cognitive improvement will do well to follow the work of Melbourne Education Research Institute over the coming years.
MIT’s [Massachusetts Institute of Technology ]Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is a network of 59 affiliated professors around the world who are united by their use of Randomized Evaluations (REs) to answer questions critical to poverty alleviation. J-PAL’s mission is to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is based on scientific evidence.
Their current work in the Education field has focussed on the vexed issues surrounding student participation.
Their ongoing [and updated] research suggests that there is strong evidence from randomized evaluations on the effectiveness of the different strategies that have been used to promote student participation.
From their research:
Achieving universal enrollment in primary school, and high attendance among those enrolled, has been a major policy focus in developing countries for the last decade. There is now considerable evidence from randomized evaluations on the effectiveness of the different strategies that have been used to promote student participation. Parents are sensitive to the cost of school and even small subsidies can improve participation. But the most cost-effective approaches of those examined here are providing families with information about the higher wages earned by those who complete school, and addressing health problems such as intestinal worms and chronic anemia.
A collection of vocational education and training (VET) related research and policy documents from various regions of the world are now available online on VOCED, including many of the older print-based copies.
VOCED is the international research database with over 35,000 documents available.
Schools involved with Creative Partnerships, the UK government’s national creative learning programme, have reduced truancy by up to a fifth and pupils have gained better exam results by up to two and a half grades at GCSE, according to this research.
If ever there was essential reading for every teacher and every teacher-educator, the work of Professor John Hattie from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, would be at the top of my reading list.
The clarity and focus of such an extensive, system-wide meta-study that focusses on the EFFECTs of what teachers, schools and education systems DO is very compelling.
Professor Hattie delivered one of the key-note presentations at the 2007 EARLI conference [European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction]
The abstract states:
The session will overview a synthesis of over 600 meta-analyses of effects on achievement, highlighting the major themes that influence student learning. From these themes, the presentation will demonstrate the development of an assessment model of student learning that has been available and extensively used in NZ elementary and high schools over the past 5 years. A particular theme of the assessment model has been methods for helping teachers see and understand student progress, enable them to set targets/high expectations, and provide feedback so that there are more aware of the importance of some of the key competencies that act as enhancers or barriers to learning.
I would highly recommend the work of Professor Hattie to all involved in educational research. I would suggest you start by reading his Inaugural Lecture from August 1999; see the link at the bottom of this page.
In this presentation, Professor Hattie presents three parts to his “story”. These are
To identify major influences on achievement [ using 700+ meta-analyses ]
To outline an assessment model based on these influences
To demonstrate the power and joy of Educational Psychology
How and why has teacher quality changed in Australia?. International research suggests that differences in teacher performance can explain a large portion of student achievement. Yet little is known about how the quality of the Australian teaching profession has changed over time. Using consistent data on the academic aptitude of new teachers, the report compares those who have entered the teaching profession in Australia over the past two decades. [Andrew Leigh]
