AN EXPLORATION OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ UNDERSTANDING OF POPULATION GENETICS

Year 2016, Volume: 5 , 302 - 308, 01.09.2016

Boujemaa Agorram Moncef Zaki Sabah Selmaoui Salah-eddine Khzami Anouar Alami

Abstract

This research examined university students’s understanding about various
concepts of population genetics and how they integrate those knowledge  to explain the theorie of Evolution. A mixed
study method was used to explore the students’ understanding of differents
factors that affect evolution. Data were collected by questionnaire and
interview and were analyzed qualitatively.

 

The results indicate that the majority of students know how can natural
selection and mutation affect allele frequency in a population but they have
difficulties to understand how act Genetic drift on the evolution of allele
frequencies. They had also misconceptions of some concepts related to evolution
like speciation.The majority of students don’t believe to Human evolution but
they accept the theory of evolution for the other species.

Keywords

Genetic population, misconceptions, evolution, natural selection, genetic drift

References

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