Secondary Science - Reproduction

This chapter on reproduction shed some interesting facts on the way children think at different ages:

Children age 6 and under believe external characteristics such as hairstyle, clothing, names, and behavior determine the gender of an individual but it is wrong for an individual to change these external characteristics to change their gender.
Children age 5 believe reproduction is a purposeful event and it comprises babies being made from preexisting parts.
By the age of 11 most children have an idea that reproduction requires the egg of the female and the sperm of the male and the unison of these two gametes occurs during sexual reproduction. Interestingly a hundred percent of the
California middle class understood this concept. Ninety-seven percent of Swedish youths aged 11-12 understood this concept.
It is also noted by age nine, eighty-three percent of Swedish children understand this concept clarifying the fact they are ahead of all other children on this concept.

Tamir et al. studied children aged 10 -14 to understand their concept of living things. 85 % of these children believed a seedling was alive but only 66% believed a seed was alive. All the children who were from an agricultural school except one knew a seed was living.
This more than likely had something to do with their agricultural curriculum.
Students did not transfer their understanding of sexual reproduction to plants, and asexual reproduction was believed to occur only amongst microorganisms.
Students believed that sexual reproduction must involve mating, and that sexual reproduction results in stronger offspring.

Hackling and Treagust studied 15 year old students views on offspring resembling their parents; 94 % knew that characteristics come from the parents, 50% understood inheritance and reproduction occur concurrently,and 44 % knew that children inherit a combination of features from both parents.
Very few students implied that genetic principles are responsible for inheritance, focusing very much on environmental factors causing the resemblance or factors such as the brain or blood.

Two questions were posited by Gott et al. to probe the concept of variation among 15 year olds. Only 14 % understood there was a connection between variation and sexual reproduction even when environmental factors were held constant.
In the other question only 1% gave a correct explanation variation involving sexual reproduction.
Adaptation was generally viewed as an individual changing in major ways to respond to the environment in order to survive. Students showed confusion over the idea of adaptation as the process by which valuable traits are passed down to offspring because better adapted individuals survive and reproduce (while individuals without these traits have a harder time surviving and die out).
Students generally had some idea of the randomness of inheritance but didn’t apply the concept of randomness and probability in this process.

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