CHILDRENS THOUGHTS ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES - A STUDY OF EXPLANATORY COHERENCE

This paper presents the results of a study which examined children's i deas about speciation. Two groups of elementary school students, 9-yea r-olds and 12-year-olds, were interviewed using a semi-structured ques tionnaire. The results indicate that several children explain the phen omena of speciation in terms of consistent explanatory frameworks that strongly resemble either early Greek or renaissance variants of Essen tialist theories in biology. The core beliefs of such frameworks const rain the types of solutions that are generated for a variety of biolog ical problems.