L’évolution : du mot aux concepts. Étude épistémologique sur la construction des concepts évolutionnistes, et les difficultés d’une transposition didactique adéquate.
FORTIN, Corinne, 07/05/1993 

This research shows that students of high school have conceptions about evolution. We can distinguish 4 main conceptions :
1°- the “Anti-Evolutionnist” conception or “creationist” which asserts that Evolution doesn’t exist, that all species have been created separately and simultaneously, and have not change since the creation.
2°- the “Non- Evolutionnist” conception is apparently close to a “creationnist” conception because student denies also a common origin of the species. But, he admits a transformation by mutation inside a lineage. And he thinks that species appear and disappear concurrently with time.
3°- the ‘transmutationnist” conception is a very original one, shared with the majority  of the students. They imagine Nature as a Super-Organism which develops through time in successive stage, staring from a common ancestor. According to this conception, extinction is impossible. From a sole origin, under the ecological pressure and owing to successive mutations, happens to a “transmutation” of species, turning into another, without extinction.
4°-the “Pro-Evolutionnist” conception isn’t exactly a darwinian conception, even all living creatures come from a common ancestor. Indeed, the student believes that species change in the course of time, but he is convinced that mutations are always beneficial and will lead to adaptations. If animals can’t get a mutation, adaptation becomes impossible, and there is extinction.
But the traditional pedagogy in biology doesn’t care about the learners conceptions. And the study of the curricula since the last 50 years shows that the  pedagogical strategy always consists showing evolution’s facts regardless of the theory of evolution. Therefore, we propose a learning model, conceived as a strategy in favour of the cognitive conflict between the learner’s and the scientific’s conceptions in epistemological perspective. We do hope that teacher and student together will be able to produce their own pedagogical project without dogmatism.