2021 Volume 45 Issue 2 Pages 234-245
Despite the accidental and purposeless nature of “biological evolution,” there is no end to the “Naturalistic Fallacy” borrowed for value judgment during social change. A previous study shows that elementary school students hold many misunderstandings concerning “biological evolution”; for example, several misconceptions such as “Lamarckism” and “teleology” (which are frequently applied even by university students). It has been pointed out that modern biology, which floats in a great sea of knowledge, should be integrated by “biological evolution.” Therefore, in this study, based on this “unified understanding of biology,” lower secondary school science was integrated from the viewpoints of “acquisition of scientific evolutionary concepts” and “elimination of misconceptions,” in order to examine the learning content and structure of biology education. By analyzing the data obtained from descriptions of the two tasks in the classes of two units (genetics and ecosystem) among lower secondary school students, it was suggested that a “unified understanding of biology” contributes to avoiding misuse of “evolution”. In conclusion, we proposed a curriculum that uses evolution as an overarching theme to integrate five units (classification, cells, genetics, evolution, and ecosystem) to create a new biology course.
