Biology teachers’ conceptions of Humankind Origin across secular and religious countries: an international comparison

Silva, Heslley Machado; Oliveira, Alandeom W.; Belloso, Gabriela Varela; Díaz, Martín Andrés; Carvalho, Graça Simões de

doi:10.1186/s12052-020-00141-9

Cited by 13 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…Hesitancy of teachers to teach evolution is not a phenomenon contained within the United States. To our knowledge, it has also been documented in Egypt (Mansour 2008), South Korea (Kim and Nehm 2011), Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay (Silva et al 2021), as well.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 62%

Barriers to teaching evolution in higher education

et al. 2021

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Background Although progress has been made in evolution education, many educators face significant barriers in their efforts to teach evolution specifically, and science in general. The purpose of this study was to identify faculty-perceived barriers to teaching evolution, specifically in religiously affiliated institutions or institutions with a highly religious student body, as well as resources faculty feel would help promote discourse around faith, evolution and science. To do this, we held a workshop with teams consisting of a science professor, a theologian and a pastor (of the predominant on-campus faith tradition) from 17 different institutions of higher education with highly religious student bodies for the purpose of helping them to create a curriculum to address perceived conflicts between science and faith. During the workshop, participants created posters identifying barriers they face and resources they perceive as helpful. These posters were analyzed for prevalent themes and framed within an ecological model of behavior. Results These teams identified prevalent barriers at each level of the ecological model. Intrapersonal factors included a fear of rocking the boat and a fear of student conflict. Interpersonal factors included perceived student lack of knowledge, student ideology, and student apathy. Institutional factors included work politics, a lack of relevant discourse surrounding the conflict, and mixed messaging to students. Community factors included social norms associated with various student demographics. And public policy factors included local and state government attempts to limit the teaching of evolution. Additionally, participants identified resources that they felt would facilitate overcoming conflict including colleagues as change agents, various assets, and tools to negate conflict. Conclusions We determined that many of the concerns are addressable, and many resources are attainable. We urge the community to work toward these solutions. Additionally, we compare our findings to what the literature has shown and discuss the implications of faculty perceptions as compared to the published literature.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 62%

Barriers to teaching evolution in higher education

et al. 2021

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“…Thus, it is relevant how teachers deal not only with student conceptions based on cognitive biases but also with religious and cultural concerns about evolution raised by their students (e.g., Scharmann & Grauer, 2020; Smith, 1994). However, this may be especially relevant for evolution education in other countries with a higher rate of students who reject evolution (e.g., Turkey; Köse, 2010) than is the case in Germany (Beniermann, 2019; Fenner, 2013; Konnemann et al, 2016; for a review, see Kuschmierz et al, 2020), since it has been shown that attitudes toward evolution are deeply rooted in the sociocultural and historical contexts of the countries of origin (Clément, 2015; Silva et al, 2021). Our purpose in this study, however, was to investigate how teachers diagnose and deal with cognitive biases that are common to students regardless of religious beliefs and worldview.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teachers' ability to diagnose and deal with alternative student conceptions of evolution

2022

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Students possess alternative conceptions of many science topics, and these conceptions can act as obstacles for learning scientific concepts. In the field of biology education, students' alternative conceptions of evolution have been widely investigated. However, there is little research on how teachers diagnose and deal with these alternative conceptions, although these abilities are a crucial part of teachers' pedagogical content knowledge. Additionally, little is known about how these abilities are connected to professional experience and content knowledge. Thus, our study investigated how (prospective) biology teachers at various points in their teaching careers diagnosed and reported dealing with alternative conceptions. Therefore, 182 preservice biology teachers, biology teachers in practical training, and in‐service biology teachers were surveyed using a questionnaire. The participants were confronted with students' explanations of evolutionary phenomena, most of them based on common student conceptions, such as anthropomorphism, teleology, and essentialism. These student conceptions are rooted in cognitive biases and are common in evolutionary and other contexts. We found that the participants diagnosed only approximately half of the alternative conceptions, with the in‐service teachers diagnosing significantly more of the alternative conceptions than the preservice teachers. Furthermore, the analyses revealed a variety of ways to deal with student conceptions. The in‐service teachers more often suggested scientifically correct approaches that address student conceptions, whereas the preservice teachers more often did not respond or responded incorrectly. Moreover, the ability to diagnose and deal with alternative conceptions correlated with teachers' content knowledge regarding the topic of evolution and their acceptance of evolution.

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“…We sought to measure evolution acceptance based on five clear statements related to the evolutionary theory: Earth age, the fossil record, common ancestry, and the origin of human beings. We included an item about understanding, related to deep time, as it has been considered a relevant barrier to evolution acceptance [ 59 ], while statements about human evolution are highly controversial even amongst biology teachers [ 60 ]. As mentioned before, the section of evolution provided scientific statements as a separated set of items as part of a longer questionnaire within the Relevance of Science Education (ROSE) project [see 56 ].…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Acceptance of evolution by high school students: Is religion the key factor?

et al. 2022

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The idea of biological evolution is not accepted by many people around the world, with a large disparity amongst countries. Some factors may act as obstacles to the acceptance of evolution, such as religion, a lack of openness to experience, and not understanding the nature of science. Although the strength of the association between evolution acceptance and non-scientific factors varies among studies, it is often assumed that resistance to evolution is the byproduct of a religious background. Some studies are even more specific and try to associate the acceptance of evolution with precise religious affiliations. We aimed to explore the strength of associations among nationality, religion, and the acceptance of evolution by students using multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) and statistical tools, with nationwide samples from two different countries. Here, we show that wider sociocultural factors predict the acceptance of evolution to a higher degree than a religious background. We carried out two nationwide data collections that allowed us to compare differences in the acceptance of evolution in Italy and Brazil by high school students who declare to belong to the same religion in the two countries. Roman Catholic students showed significant differences between the two countries, and the gap between them was wider than between Catholics and non-Catholic Christians within Brazil. Our conclusions support those who argue that religious affiliation is not the main factor in predicting the level of evolution acceptance. The sociocultural environment and the level of evolutionary knowledge seem to be more important in this regard. These results open up new interpretative perspectives and provide a better understanding of attitudes towards evolution.

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Biology teachers’ conceptions of Humankind Origin across secular and religious countries: an international comparison

Cited by 13 publications

References 56 publications

Barriers to teaching evolution in higher education

Barriers to teaching evolution in higher education

Teachers' ability to diagnose and deal with alternative student conceptions of evolution

Acceptance of evolution by high school students: Is religion the key factor?

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