Primary Students’ Perceptions of Animals: Insights for Primary Science Education

Abstract

A scientifically grounded grasp of the living world is bound up with students’ prior conceptions, which can shape how new scientific knowledge is acquired and interpreted. This study examined primary-school students’ perceptions of animals as a component of their prior conceptions and sought to identify patterns of thinking that may contribute to misconceptions relevant to early science teaching. The sample comprised 189 students from the first to the fourth grade. Data were gathered by questionnaire and analyzed using descriptive statistics, correlational analysis, t-tests, analysis of variance, and qualitative content analysis of students’ justifications. Astrong association emerged between the appeal of animals’ appearance and the intensity of fear toward them, showing that students’ evaluations are shaped not merely by biological characteristics but by esthetic, affective, and experiential factors. The identified misconceptions involve the overgeneralization of traits, fictional representations, and the neglect of ecological function, particularly for less appealing animals such as the spider, snake, bat, and earthworm. Boys reported less fear of animals than girls, whereas no differences emerged by grade. The results point to a need for reshaping students’ representations by redirecting them from the appearance criterion to a grasp of the ecological function of animals.