Undergraduates' understanding of evolution: ascriptions of agency as a problem for student learning

This paper explores the conceptions of evolutionary processes held by a group of university students (n = 126) before receiving instruction on evolution. We focus on students' linguistic usage in order to speculate about the source of some of the conceptual problems students encounter in this area. A central problem is the tendency ofstudents to ascribe agency when attempting to describe evolutionary processes in a way that contributes to misconceptions. Whilst scientifically accepted notions of natural selection emphasise random processes of genetic mutation and allele recombination during reproduction, leading to variation in populations, many problematic notions held by students seem to suggest adaptive processes that are purposive, even conscious striving for evolutionary progress and advantage. This goal-directedness is often presented as an internal, inherent attributeof individual organisms or of populations of species (a kind of collective consciousness) or, less commonly, externally as a consciou...