Role of prior knowledge in learning biology over the first undergraduate years

Undergraduate students enrol to university with diverse levels of prior knowledge and intuitive conceptions about essential biological topics, such as metabolic processes, ecosystem dynamics and Darwinian evolution. This longitudinal study explored the development of conceptual understanding about these topics and how domain-specific prior knowledge affects this learning progression. Undergraduate students (N = 50) of biological and environmental sciences participated in three measurement points where the same questionnaire with open-ended procedural tasks was three times: baseline (2019), follow-up 1 (2020), and follow-up 2 (2021). A mixed-methods approach was used for quantitative scoring of the answers and qualitative thematic analysis to describe the development of individual students’ conceptual understanding. The effect of prior knowledge was studied by dividing the students into two groups based on median splitting the baseline scores. During the first two years, the students’ understanding generally improved as demonstrated by the statistically significant increases in mean scores. Students with lower prior knowledge performed poorer in both follow-up measurements despite them experiencing more knowledge gains. The differences between baseline answers were the greatest in tasks about evolution. Students with lower prior knowledge experienced desirable shifts in their explanatory models about evolutionary processes, but an equal amount exhibited a fragmented learning progress. Students with a more robust prior understanding of such a complex, emergent phenomenon are more likely to perform better and can integrate more scientific concepts to their knowledge framework. Implications for teaching will be discussed in the presentation.