This chapter focuses on the foundational role that intuitive reasoning, such as essentialist
and teleological reasoning, and intuitive language forms, such as generics, might play in the …

A large body of cognitive research has shown that people intuitively and effortlessly reason
about the biological world in complex and systematic ways. We addressed two questions …

Research and theory development in cognitive psychology and science education research
remain largely isolated. Biology education researchers have documented persistent …

This chapter notes that the use of intuitions to jump-start more sophisticated reasoning has
been proposed for mathematics. The question addressed is whether core intuitions can also …

It might seem contradictory to believe that humans were created in their present form at one
time within the past 10,000 years and at the same time believe that humans developed over …

Intuitive conceptions based on cognitive biases (teleology, anthropomorphism, and
essentialism) often prove helpful in everyday life while simultaneously being problematic in …

Common-sense intuitions can be useful guides in everyday life and problem solving.
However, they can also impede formal science learning and provide the basis for robust …

When students learn scientific theories that conflict with their earlier, naïve theories, what
happens to the earlier theories? Are they overwritten or merely suppressed? We …

Students possess informal, intuitive ways of reasoning about the world, including biological
phenomena. Although useful in some cases, intuitive reasoning can also lead to the …

Many ideas in the biological sciences seem especially difficult to understand, learn, and
teach successfully. Our goal in this feature is to explore how these difficulties may stem not …