Regarding such an important issue as our origin,
as well as the origin of all biological diversity, it is
surprising to realize that evolution still faces drawbacks in
keeping its deserved notability as a unifying theory in
biology. This does not happen because evolutionism lacks
validity as a scientific theory, but rather because of several
misconceptions regarding evolutionary biology that were
and continue to be found in elementary and secondary
education. Furthermore, mistaken evolutionary ideas also
affect some philosophical and social issues. The aim of the
present study was to evaluate knowledge about evolution
among freshman students from distinct majoring areas at
Universidade Estadual do Centro-Oeste do Paraná (UNICENTRO),
Brazil. The research was carried out based on a
ten-question questionnaire about evolution with distinct
levels of difficulty, comprising the most observed misconceptions.
In this study, 231 students attending classes in
biological sciences (morning and evening schedule), exact
sciences (agronomy, physics, chemistry, and math), and
human sciences (history, geography, and pedagogy) were
interviewed. The total average of right answers was 48.8%,
and the highest average per course obtained was 58.7%
from the students attending biological sciences (evening
schedule). Although evolutionary biology and ecology are
supposed to represent teaching guide issues according to
the recommendations of the National Curricular Parameters for the Secondary School, the data obtained suggest that the
evidence for evolution, the role of natural selection and
random events, as well as the sources of variation, must be
better focused at schools