Advances in Physiology Education, Vol 258, Issue 6 8-10, Copyright © 1990 by American Physiological Society
A survey of students' notions of body function as teleologic or mechanistic
D. R. Richardson
Department of Physiology and Biophysics, University of Kentucky College of Medicine, Lexington 40536-0084.
The objectives of this study were to determine 1) the relative degrees to
which students' notions of physiological functions are teleologic or
mechanistic in nature, 2) whether these notions differ between students in
elementary and advanced-level physiology courses, and 3) whether the degree
of teleologic vs. mechanistic thinking can be modified by direct discussion
of this topic. A questionnaire that determined whether students thought
about body functions in a teleologic (why) or mechanistic (how) manner was
administered to the following categories of students: 1) a class of high
school biology students, 2) classes of students taking elementary
college-level physiology courses, and 3) college students in advanced
physiology courses. Overall, there was an average 61% teleologic response
among the various classes, and differences between the classes were not
statistically significant (P greater than 0.05). To address objective 3,
one of the classes was presented the questionnaire after being given a
lecture on teleology vs. mechanistic approaches to body function. The
average teleological response of this class was only 12%, a value
significantly lower in comparison, by a one-way analysis of variance, to
any of the other groups (P less than 0.0001). These results indicate that
the students have a strong tendency to think of body functions in
teleological terms and that this tendency can be modified on a short-term
basis by a direct discussion (by an instructor) of teleologic vs.
mechanistic thinking.
