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Omne Vivum Ex Vivo”? A Study of Middle School Students’ Explanations of the Seemingly Sudden Appearance of Some Life Forms

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Abstract

This study examined explanations given by a sample of middle school students in India (175 students, grade 8, average age of 12.3 years), of the seemingly sudden appearance of some life forms observed in their day-to-day experience. It uncovered a variety of interesting ideas including, but not limited to, pre-Pasteur notions of some forms of life generating spontaneously from inorganic matter. We analyze these explanations for consistency of frameworks used by students to generate them and discuss them in light of the historical development of ideas on the generation of life. Given that students gave these explanations despite several years of formal instruction in biology, we look at how these ideas persisted despite formal instruction and present some qualitative insights on the treatment of this topic in their curriculum. We believe this study can be useful for curriculum developers and teachers who deal with biology education at the introductory level.

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Notes

  1. We have used the unscientific term “tummy”, a term commonly used by children for the abdominal area. The correct term “intestinal worms” is unfamiliar to students; “stomach” may be understandable, but incorrect.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the schools and students who participated in this study. We thank our colleagues J. Kumbhare and A. Farkade for research support and A. Kawalkar for help with preliminary studies that led to this work. We are grateful to A. Kumar for very helpful discussions. M. Tata, A. Unmesh, and G. Sharma who helped with the final draft. We thank A. Mazumdar for generous help with the figure.

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Correspondence to Jyotsna Vijapurkar.

Appendix

Appendix

Worksheet

  1. 1.

    It was the end of the monsoon season. Mini and her grandmother were taking the mosquito nets out of the trunk—there were so many mosquitoes, it was impossible to sleep without the nets.

    Mini remembered that last year, too, there were many, many mosquitoes at this time. In school, Mini had learned that mosquitoes lay their eggs in water. There is plenty of it in the rains! She had also learned that a mosquito lives for only about a month. She started thinking that after some months, all the little ponds and ditches would dry up. So a month after that, all the mosquitoes should be dead. She was really puzzled—where will mosquitoes come from next year? Where did they come from this year? And every year before that? How will you answer her?

  2. 2.

    Sandesh went to the doctor because he had worms in his tummy.Footnote 1 The doctor gave him medicine to get rid of them. Sandesh loves sweets. His uncle told him that is why he got worms in his tummy.

    Do you think eating a lot of sweets can cause worms? How?

  3. 3.

    Amitoj always parked his bicycle in the same corner spot at his school. After some days of rainy weather, he noticed that patches of the wall nearby had started turning green—moss was growing on it. He had not seen any moss there before. There was no moss anywhere in the surroundings before the rains started. So how did it appear out of nowhere? What do you think?

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Vijapurkar, J., Konde, P. “Omne Vivum Ex Vivo”? A Study of Middle School Students’ Explanations of the Seemingly Sudden Appearance of Some Life Forms. Res Sci Educ 44, 885–902 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-014-9406-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-014-9406-1

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