European first-year university students accept evolution but lack substantial knowledge about it: a standardized European cross-country assessment

Abstract

Background Investigations of evolution knowledge and acceptance and their relation are central to evolution education research. Ambiguous results in this field of study demonstrate a variety of measuring issues, for instance differently theorized constructs, or a lack of standardized methods, especially for cross-country comparisons. In particular, meaningful comparisons across European countries, with their varying cultural backgrounds and education systems, are rare, often include only few countries, and lack standardization. To address these deficits, we conducted a standardized European survey, on 9200 first-year university students in 26 European countries utilizing a validated, comprehensive questionnaire, the “Evolution Education Questionnaire”, to assess evolution acceptance and knowledge, as well as influencing factors on evolution acceptance. Results We found that, despite European countries’ different cultural backgrounds and education systems, European first-year university students generally accept evolution. At the same time, they lack substantial knowledge about it, even if they are enrolled in a biology-related study program. Additionally, we developed a multilevel-model that determines religious faith as the main influencing factor in accepting evolution. According to our model, knowledge about evolution and interest in biological topics also increase acceptance of evolution, but to a much lesser extent than religious faith. The effect of age and sex, as well as the country’s affiliation, students’ denomination, and whether or not a student is enrolled in a biology-related university program, is negligible. Conclusions Our findings indicate that, despite all their differences, most of the European education systems for upper secondary education lead to acceptance of evolution at least in university students. It appears that, at least in this sample, the differences in knowledge between countries reflect neither the extent to which school curricula cover evolutionary biology nor the percentage of biology-related students in the country samples. Future studies should investigate the role of different European school curricula, identify particularly problematic or underrepresented evolutionary concepts in biology education, and analyze the role of religious faith when teaching evolution.

The Impact of Evolutionary Education on Knowledge and Understanding the Evolution

“…However, even in those cases where it can be found in textbooks, it is often controversial in terms of the formation of misconceptions among pupils. The same findings about the inadequacy of teaching evolution or the existing problems in teaching evolution were reached by Kuschmierz et al (2021), who call for the naming of problematic or under-represented teaching of evolutionary phenomena in the subject of biology, across 26 European countries. Paradoxically, on a pan-European scale, students in apprenticeship programmes with biology performed better in knowledge about evolution (Kuschmierz et al, 2021), but this was not confirmed in the context of the Slovak Republic -students in combination with biology did not perform better than students in other apprenticeship programmes in terms of knowledge about evolution.…”

“…This could have an impact on students' further knowledge of the subject. Kuschmierz et al (2021) adds that the sheer number of lessons related to the topic of evolution says nothing about the quality and effectiveness of teaching, and is therefore not a decisive factor for improving students' knowledge of evolution.…”

Promoting scientific literacy in evolution through citizen science

“…For example, many people are not aware that mutations are random and have a range of effects; that the potential for adaptability is not unbounded; nor that 'survival of the fittest' refers to how organisms compare to each other, rather than some absolute fitness metric. Indeed, misconceptions are frequent and widespread across different demographic groups, including young students, teachers and the general public [35][36][37].…”

“…Acceptance of evolution is also influenced by the total number of years spent in education [38], understanding of nature of science [47], attitudes towards science [48], knowledge/understanding of evolution [49], and gross domestic product per capita [50]. Additionally, there is still a debate about the relationship between acceptance and actual understanding of evolution with conflicting evidence for strong positive correlation [51], weak positive relationship [36,37,48], or no correlation at all [52].…”

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

“…The authors [ 18 ] then developed an instrument to measure attitudes and understanding across Europe and beyond, called the “Evolution Education Questionnaire on Acceptance and Knowledge” (EEQ). The measurement instrument was translated into several European languages, in the various Romance, Germanic, and Slavic branches, and was recently applied to 9200 first-year university students in 26 European countries [ 19 ].…”