The possible influence of curriculum statements and textbooks on misconceptions: The case of evolution

THE POSSIBLE INFLUENCE OF CURRICULUM STATEMENTS AND TEXTBOOKS ON MISCONCEPTIONS: THE CASE OF EVOLUTION Martie Sanders Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences University of the Witwatersrand Email: Dennis Makotsa Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences University of the Witwatersrand ABSTRACT Curriculum statements and textbooks are considered to be vital support tools for teachers, particularly during times of curriculum innovation. A recent change in South Africa was the controversial inclusion of evolution in the school curriculum, raising serious concerns amongst biology teachers regarding the adequacy of their content and pedagogical content knowledge for teaching the topic. Widespread ‘misconceptions’ about evolution make teaching this topic difficult for biology teachers worldwide. Identifying the sources of errors is an essential step needed before addressing them. This study explored curriculum support materials as a possible source of misconceptions, using content analysis of the South African school Natural Sciences curriculum statement and six Grade 7–9 Natural Sciences textbooks from two different publishers, and investigated ‘curriculum slippages’ between the ‘formal’ and ‘perceived’ curricula. The aim was to determine the nature and extent of unscientific ideas about evolution, and university of south africa DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/1947-9417/2015/555 Print ISSN 1682-3206 | Online 1947-9417 © 2016 The Authors Education as Change www.educationaschange.co.za Volume 20 | Number 1 | 2016 pp. 216–238 216 Sanders and Makotsa Curriculum materials as a source of misconceptions to see how authors dealt with potential misconceptions. Errors were found in the curriculum statement and in the textbooks, where they escalated in frequency. Latent problems associated with ambiguous wording of statements posed further problems. Although this paper uses evolution as an example, lessons learned about curriculum materials as a possible influence on misconceptions are applicable to other subjects. Keywords: curriculum support materials, textbooks, misconceptions, curriculum slippages, evolution, natural selection In times of curriculum innovation textbooks become important props for teachers, particularly if they are inadequately prepared to implement new curriculum content. However, an important assumption is that such support materials will be scientifically accurate. If they contain errors, teachers with poor content knowledge may not be in a position to recognise mistakes, which are thus likely to be transmitted to pupils. This paper focuses on an investigation of curriculum statements and textbooks as a possible source of misconceptions, as well as how the textbooks identified and addressed common misconceptions. We have used the umbrella term ‘misconceptions’ for this paper in the commonly understood everyday sense, referring to incorrect ideas, as this is how most teachers and the public are likely to understand the term. Because document analysis was used for this study it was not possible to discriminate between ideas which have been mentally constructed by the document authors (the correct technical meaning of ‘misconceptions’) and ‘errors’, which have been acquired from some outside source. THE CONTEXT OF THE STUDY The inclusion of evolution in the South African school curriculum The radical revision of the South African school curriculum, progressively implemented by the newly elected government’s education department between 1998 and 2008, was characterised by several changes, one of which was a modernising of the science curriculum in terms of content. The most dramatic change was the inclusion of evolution by natural selection. A widely held but somewhat inaccurate perception is that evolution was excluded from the school curriculum during the almost 50 years that the National Party governed the country (1948 to April 1994), because any knowledge considered at variance with the Christian National Education (CNE) policy, which underpinned previous school curricula, was omitted. However, tracking the history of evolution in South African schooling, Lever (2002:34) explains that CNE policy, which espoused the belief captured in a 1948 publication of CNE ideals that ‘the spirit and direction of every subject taught must correspond to the Christian and National life- and world-view … and that in no subject may antiChristian, unchristian or anti-national or un-national propaganda be conveyed’, was 217 Sanders and Makotsa Curriculum materials as a source of misconceptions only officially implemented in 1967. Furthermore, Darwin was included in a brief history of leading biological figures in a 1947 syllabus used for some years under the National Party rule, and Lever (2002:36) suggests that the syllabus functioning in the 1950s (inherited by the National Party when they came into power in 1948) was more a case of ‘non-Darwinism than anti-Darwinism’. Furthermore, Dada (2002), investigating changes in biology textbooks, found mixed results in books she reviewed from the 1980s (Nationalist era) and 1990s (African National Congress era, but prior to any curriculum changes). Three of four books reviewed referred to evolution, although one mistakenly claimed there was no evidence that major evolutionary changes happened by natural selection, and that ‘whichever view one takes is largely a matter of faith’ (Dada 2002:128). It thus appears that political influences on the inclusion of evolution in the school curriculum during the last five decades of the twentieth century are not clear cut, and the inclusion of evolution possibly depended on, among other factors, publishers’ policies and the textbooks selected by schools. Evolution-related topics were formally introduced into the South African school curriculum at the General Education and Training (GET) level (Grades R to 9) when the Revised National Curriculum Statement (RNCS) was introduced from Grade R in 2004. However, the term ‘evolution’ was not used in the Natural Sciences learning area, probably to avoid potential controversy. Nevertheless, the essential elements of evolution were included: adaptations, extinctions, natural selection, and fossils. In the History section of the Social Sciences learning area, the term ‘evolution’ was used, with the topic of human evolution being included in Grade 7, dealing with early hominid discoveries in south and east Africa, and ‘becoming human in southern Africa’ (Department of Education 2004). Concerns about including evolution in school curricula only started to emerge when evolution made its appearance at the Further Education and Training level (Grades 10 to 12) in 2008, in the externally examinable Grade 12 Life Sciences curriculum. This inclusion meant teachers could not omit the topic as some GET teachers had been doing. The Life Sciences curriculum has since undergone two revisions, the first of which (starting in 2009) saw evolution-related co (...truncated)