Understanding agency in evolutionary explanations: an assessment tool for biology education

Abstract

Evolution education seeks to help students develop scientifically adequate explanations of evolutionary adaptations. Those explanations are usually thought to entail only processes that act independently of organism agency, such as genetic mutation, inheritance, and selection. However, the role of organism agency in evolutionary outcomes has been reconsidered by evolutionary biologists in recent decades. We suggest that this agential perspective offers new potential and implications for evolution education. To explore this potential, we developed the assessment tool EvoFlex. It aims to identify students’ ability to flexibly and adequately integrate the role of organism agency across cases of evolutionary adaptation. We implemented this assessment tool with preservice biology teachers, followed by interviews with a subset of respondents. Results indicate that many participants could recognise the scientifically adequate integration of organism agency across cases, despite not being specifically trained in this perspective. However, other students were also prone to disregard any role of organism agency, or they had difficulty thinking about what role it might play in evolution. Our results highlight that the agential perspective has potential in evolution education and point to several future directions in educational research and practice.