Students’ reasons for preferring teleological explanations

ABSTRACT

The teleological bias, a major learning obstacle, involves explaining biological phenomena in terms of purposes and goals. To probe the teleological bias, researchers have used acceptance judgement tasks and preference judgement tasks. In the present study, such tasks were used with German high school students (N = 353) for 10 phenomena from human biology, that were explained both teleologically and causally. A sub-sample (n = 26) was interviewed about the reasons for their preferences. The results showed that the students favoured teleological explanations over causal explanations. Although the students explained their preference judgements etiologically (i.e. teleologically and causally), they also referred to a wide range of non-etiological criteria (i.e. familiarity, complexity, relevance and five more criteria). When elaborating on their preference for causal explanations, the students often focused not on the causality of the phenomenon, but on mechanisms whose complexity they found attractive. When explaining their preference for teleological explanations, they often focused not teleologically on purposes and goals, but rather on functions, which they found familiar and relevant. Generally, students’ preference judgements rarely allowed for making inferences about causal reasoning and teleological reasoning, an issue that is controversial in the literature. Given that students were largely unaware of causality and teleology, their attention must be directed towards distinguishing between etiological and non-etiological reasoning. Implications for educational practice as well as for future research are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Teleology
• causality
• explanation
• reasoning
• student conceptions

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Friederike Trommler http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7243-7477

Helge Gresch http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9641-3939

Notes

1. In this study, we adopt the terminology commonly used in science education as we contrast ‘teleological explanations’ – which give purposes/functions as causes – with ‘causal explanations’ – which give mechanisms as causes. From a logical perspective, if teleological explanations give functions as causes, they are in fact a specific kind of causal explanation. However, in the science education context, the focus is not on this structural commonality but on the different kinds of causes given in the two explanation types.

2. In this paper, we adopt the terms ‘teleological formulations’ and ‘teleological reasoning’ from Friedler et al. (1993). ‘Teleological formulations’ contain teleological language. Whether the teleological formulation is meant metaphorically or literally can be deduced only from the context or by asking further questions. By ‘teleological reasoning’, we refer to literal teleological thought that considers functions causes of (biological) phenomena.

3. [T] The student refers to the teleological explanation.

4. [C] The student refers to the causal explanation.

5. [T] The student refers to the teleological explanation.