Prevalence and Persistence of Misconceptions in Tree Thinking.

ABSTRACT: Darwin described evolution as "descent with modification." Descent, however, is not an explicit focus of most evolution instruction and often leaves deeply held misconceptions to dominate student understanding of common ancestry and species relatedness. Evolutionary trees are ways of visually depicting descent by illustrating the relationships between species and groups of species. The ability to properly interpret and use evolutionary trees has become known as "tree thinking." We used a 20-question assessment to measure misconceptions in tree thinking and compare the proportion of students who hold these misconceptions in an introductory biology course with students in two higher-level courses including a senior level biology course. We found that misconceptions related to reading the gra

SUBMITTER: Kummer TA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5134942 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature