Major misconceptions, or “alternative” conceptions as they’re sometimes called, and knowledge gaps about basic scientific concepts provide huge barriers to students of all ages as they acquire environmental science knowledge. Identifying and challenging ecological and environmental misconceptions is central to improving environmental literacy in our changing world. Dispelling these scientific misconceptions is essential to producing an environmentally literate society. This is certainly a challenging task, but one we must pursue as science educators. Once we have carefully examined our students' grasp of basic scientific concepts, we can then proceed to either correct their inaccuracies or build upon a scaffold of accurate understanding. This session will demonstrate different methods used to uncover and dispel misconceptions across ecology and related disciplines. Opening speakers will focus on methods used to examine how students think and learn about natural selection. Other speakers will focus on identifying misconceptions about ecology among college students. This will be followed by studies concerning K-12 students and their teachers. All will exemplify ways to discover conceptual problems and remedy them.