Evolution in European and Israeli school curricula – a comparative analysis

Mavrikaki, Evangelia and Realdon, Giulia and Aivelo, Tuomas and Bajrami, Ani and Bakanay, Cicek Dilek and Beniermann, Anna and Blagojević, Jelena and Butkeviciene, Egle and Cavadas, Bento and Cossu, Constantina and Cvetković, Dragana D. and Drobniak, Szymon M. and Durmuș, Zelal Özgül and Dvořáková, Radka M. and Eens, Marcel and Eret, Esra and Kuschmierz, Paul and Lendvai, Ádám Zoltán and Nogueira, Teresa and Varga, Máté and Yardan, Anat and Sá-Pinto, Xana (2024) Evolution in European and Israeli school curricula – a comparative analysis. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENCE EDUCATION, 46 (15). pp. 1623-1649. ISSN 0950-0693

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Abstract

The contribution of school curricula to public understanding and acceptance of evolution is still mostly unknown, due to the scarcity of studies that compare the learning goals present in different curricula. To overcome this lack of data we analysed 19 school curricula (18 European and one from Israel) to study the differences regarding the inclusion of learning goals targeting evolution understanding. We performed a quantitative content analysis using the Framework for the Assessment of school Curricula on the presence of Evolutionary concepts (FACE). For each country/region we analysed what this educational system considered the minimum evolution education a citizen should get. Our results reveal that: (i) the curricula include less than half of the learning goals considered important for scientific literacy in evolution; (ii) the most frequent learning goals address basic knowledge of evolution; (iii) learning goals related with the processes that drive evolution are often not included or rarely mentioned; (iv) evolution is most often not linked to its applications in everyday life. These results highlight the need to rethink evolution education across Europe.

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