Abstract:

Paleontology is an essential discipline in the initial training of students, in order to properly understand the natural environment and its evolution. Despite its scarce presence in the compulsory education curricula in Spain, this discipline enjoys great popularity among young people, and its presence in the Media, particularly in the movies, is common. Using a questionnaire on paleontological contents treated in 18 films, with questions organized in three levels of complexity, the present work evaluates the knowledge in paleontology for 210 students from 9 schools in the Community of Madrid (Spain). Our analyses show a significant deficit on paleontology and evolution knowledge among the students surveyed. Although basic knowledge is well established for all students, questions reflecting a higher level of complexity obtained bad results (percentages of correct answers below 40%) in both, primary and secondary school groups. The influence of non-educational resources (extracurricular activities, Media, access to specialized resources, visits to museums, etc.) in basic science learning is proposed as a possible cause for the results in low complexity questions. On the other hand, the more complex questions had unexpectedly bad results for secondary school students, which seems to be related to the educational level of the students surveyed (1st and 2nd year of Secondary School Education). Finally, the results obtained for the advanced questions, linked to higher educational levels, meet the criteria of lack of knowledge that is assumed for students in compulsory education. According to these results, develop and implement specific activities to mitigate the lack of knowledge in paleontology, evolution, etc., arises as a first order issue.

Keywords:

Paleontology, Evolution, Compulsory Education, Paleontological movies.