Promoting Understanding of Evolution Theory through a Science Comic (ECOSCOMICS Project)
January 24th, 2025 4 PM CET/10 AM EST
Life Science Faculty, Institute for Biology, Leipzig University (Germany)
See this webinar at https://youtu.be/9ulBjFHf2Ts
The presentation examines the potential of a science comic (SC) created to promote the understanding of evolution. The Erasmus+ project ECOSCOMICS (2021-1-FR01- KA220-SCH-000030110) unites science educators, scientists and professional artists to develop web-based SC on seven scientific topics. Each episode addresses the core concepts of the topic as well as prominent alternative conceptions, see https://www.grandiloquents.fr/en. In the field of evolution theory, abstract and counterintuitive concepts such as natural selection are particularly challenging for science teachers, as conceptual change processes depend on the learners’ prior conceptions (Vosniadou et al., 2008). Some authors underline the potential of SC that address these alternative conceptions or contrasting conflicting scientific perspectives (Özdemir & Eryılmaz, 2019). Furthermore, SC can increase learners’ engagement and motivation (Maron et al., 2019). However, we still lack empirical evidence on the effectiveness of SC, particularly in secondary education.
Therefore, J. Zabel’s workgroup in Leipzig (Germany) helped to develop the evolution episode within the ECOSCOMICS project, centred around whale evolution. Furthermore, we examined whether it could help students to understand natural selection and the associated concepts, and which teaching-and-learning arrangements are productive for embedding the SC into teaching units on evolution. The SC episode on Evolution was tested in 2023 in classroom contexts of the ECOSCOMICS partners in Germany, Portugal and Poland. In the German study, KAEVO 2.0 questionnaire (Kuschmierz et al., 2020) was used to measure the student’s understanding of biological concepts, and thereby the effectiveness of the intervention.
Our findings indicate that the studied SC episode on whale evolution has the potential to promote understanding of the evolution theory and to reduce known alternative conceptions in a motivating format. Addressing specific misconceptions appears to be one of the medium’s strengths. Our results suggest that this SC is most efficient in an autonomous teaching arrangement (Portugal), and for students with less prior knowledge (Germany).
In the webinar, we will explore the evolution episode and its specific features that are designed to foster motivation and conceptual change processes.
Fig.1: Image from the Evolution Episode of the Science comic series
Biosketch:
Jörg Zabel is a professor in Biology Education at Leipzig University (Germany). After working as a grammar school teacher (2000-2003), he investigated the role of narrative for understanding evolution in his PhD thesis at Leibniz University Hannover. In 2011, he became a full professor in Leipzig and has been leading the Biology Education workgroup since then. His research interests are teaching and learning evolution theory, biodiversity and bioethics, conceptual metaphor, and narrative in science teaching.
Prof. Dr. Jörg Zabel
Life Science Faculty
Institute for Biology
Workgroup Biology Education
Johannisallee 21-23
D-04103 Leipzig
T: +49-341-97 366 41
joerg.zabel@uni-leipzig.de
https://www.lw.uni-leipzig.de/biodidaktik/