Evolution in European and Israeli school curricula – a comparative analysis

The contribution of school curricula to public understanding and acceptance of evolution is still mostly unknown, due to the scarcity of studies that compare the learning goals present in different curricula. To overcome this lack of data we analysed 19 school curricula (18 European and one from Israel) to study the differences regarding the inclusion of learning goals targeting evolution understanding. We performed a quantitative content analysis using the Framework for the Assessment of school Curricula on the presence of Evolutionary concepts (FACE). For each country/region we analysed what this educational system considered the minimum evolution education a citizen should get. Our results reveal that: (i) the curricula include less than half of the learning goals considered important for scientific literacy in evolution; (ii) the most frequent learning goals address basic knowledge of evolution; (iii) learning goals related with the processes that drive evolution are often not included or rarely mentioned; (iv) evolution is most often not linked to its applications in everyday life. These results highlight the need to rethink evolution education across Europe.

Palavras-chave

evolution learning goals biology education education policy

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/10400.15/4822

Citação

Mavrikaki, E., Realdon, G., Aivelo, T., Bajrami, A., Dilek Bakanay, Ç., Beniermann, A., … Sá-Pinto, X. (2024). Evolution in European and Israeli school curricula – a comparative analysis. International Journal of Science Education, 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500693.2023.2293090

Editora

Taylor and Francis

DOI

10.1080/09500693.2023.2293090

Coleções

Artigos em revistas internacionais_ESES

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