Obstáculos para el aprendizaje del modelo de evolución por selección natural, en estudiantes de escuela secundaria de Argentina*

In this work we present the results of research which intended to identify the principal obstacles for the learning of the model of evolution by natural selection in students belonging to two courses in secondary school. The existence of obstacles is deduced from the identification and characterization of the explicative patterns and the conceptions that the students express when they explain cases of adaptive evolution. This is supported by the analysis coming from the history and epistemology of biology and from cognitive psychology. It identifies common-sense teleology, linear causal reason...