Community College Student Understanding and Perceptions of Evolution

Barnes, M. Elizabeth; Riley, Rebekkah; Bowen, Chloe; Cala, Jacqueline M.; Brownell, Sara E.

doi:10.1187/cbe.21-09-0229

Cited by 6 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…In addition, researchers have found that students with creationist views can demonstrate a solid understanding of evolution and students who identify themselves as evolutionists may in turn demonstrate a poor understanding of evolutionary theory (Demastes-Southerland et al 1995;Hermann 2016). Another study also showed that understanding and acceptance can be related to each other in some college students but less so in others (Barnes et al 2022). It is, however, unclear exactly how knowledge and acceptance influence each other (Dunk et al 2019).…”

Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 98%

“…Using university student population samples and generalizing their results to the general population is problematic (Hanel and Vione 2016). Specifically, in regard to evolution understanding, students enrolled in community college have reported lower levels of understanding than those enrolled in a four-year university (Barnes et al 2022). It may be that community college students are more representative of the general public than fouryear college students as they are often representative of a broader range of ages.…”

Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 99%

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Still a private universe? Community college students’ understanding of evolution

2023

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Background Measuring what students know and retain about evolution is essential to improving our understanding of how students learn evolution. The literature shows that college students appear to have a poor understanding of evolution, answering questions on various instruments correctly only about half of the time. There is little research regarding evolution understanding among community college students and so this study examines if those students who are enrolled in life science classes, who are assessed using questions based on grade eight standards, show a better understanding of evolutionary principles than younger students and if there are differences in knowledge based on course enrollment. The authors utilized a survey of 41 items of the Life Sciences Concept Inventory that were specifically designed to measure knowledge about various aspects of evolution that relate to the 5–8 grade science standards on evolution. They administered it to 191 adult students who were enrolled in nine sections across five life sciences courses at one community college in Southern California. Results Results indicated that the students in this study possessed a fair understanding of evolution, averaging scores of nearly 70%, higher than what other researchers have found (using different instruments). Students enrolled in biology major classes scored significantly higher than those enrolled in non/mixed-major courses. There was a strong relationship between item difficulty and discrimination as well as difficulty and misconception strength. When compared with the 5–8 grade student data, the community college students showed a lower level of difficulty and higher levels of item discrimination, but the proportion choosing the most popular wrong answer (the dominant misconception), was comparable. College students showed similar patterns to the grade 5–8 students in terms of which questions and which material were the most challenging, despite performing better overall. Conclusions In this study, students possessed fair understanding of evolution. However, they were assessed with an instrument designed for 5th through 8th grade students. The results of this study support the need for more research into how community college students understand evolution and which factors impact that understanding.

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Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 99%

Still a private universe? Community college students’ understanding of evolution

2023

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“…Moreover, acceptance of micro‐evolution and macro‐evolution are highly correlated (Nadelson & Southerland, 2012). For community college students, however, acceptance of micro‐evolution was predicted by understanding of evolution, but not for macro‐evolution (Barnes et al, 2022). In contrast, for university students, both types of acceptance were predicted by understanding (Barnes et al, 2022) as well as trust in science (Nadelson & Hardy, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For community college students, however, acceptance of micro‐evolution was predicted by understanding of evolution, but not for macro‐evolution (Barnes et al, 2022). In contrast, for university students, both types of acceptance were predicted by understanding (Barnes et al, 2022) as well as trust in science (Nadelson & Hardy, 2015). Combined with the findings from our study, it seems that there may be differences in understanding of micro‐ and macro‐evolutionary processes and more subtle differences in acceptance.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Family conversations about species change as support for children's developing understandings of evolution

Hohenstein

Tenenbaum

2022

Science Education

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To examine the ways that 6-to 11-year-old children's conversation with their parents support their developing understandings of evolution, 49 parent-child dyads participated in a study with two elicited discussion tasks: origins of species and potential species change. Conversational data were transcribed, coded, and qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed to compare the appearance of reasoning in each type of task. Quantitative analyses revealed correlations between tasks in informed naturalistic reasoning as well as differences in the way reasoning was expressed in each task. In addition, parent-child dyads with older children were more likely to use informed naturalistic reasoning than parent-child dyads with younger children. A subset of the data was analyzed qualitatively and showed that irrespective of how much evolution reference was present in the conversation, parents supported their children's learning through scaffolding.However, greater amounts of nonscientific reasoning appeared in the groups with less evolution talk. This study demonstrates that family talk about evolution varies with context both within and between families.

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“…In recent years, the usage of the I‐SEA has increased (e.g., Barnes et al, 2019, 2020a, 2020b, 2021a, 2021b, 2022b; Ferguson & Jensen, 2021; Fiedler et al, 2019; Hartelt et al, 2022; Rachmatullah et al, 2018; Romine et al, 2018; Sbeglia & Nehm, 2019, 2020; Wingert et al, 2022), and several new insights into the structure of the scales were presented. For example, Sbeglia and Nehm (2019) found that the scales for microevolution and macroevolution are very stable within a university student sample, while the human evolution scale may be split into two sub‐dimensions (i.e., human microevolution and human macroevolution).…”

Section: Measuring Evolution Acceptancementioning

confidence: 99%

Validity aspects in measuring evolution acceptance: Evidence from surveys of preservice biology teachers and creationists

2022

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Over the past decades, a large body of research has examined students' magnitudes of evolution acceptance and related measurement issues resulting in questions concerning instruments' validity and operationalization. Until now, several studies investigated validity aspects of often‐used evolution acceptance instruments and came to diverging conclusions about instruments' scores comparability. Within the last years, religious identity was identified as a significant predictor for magnitudes of evolution acceptance. However, religious identity can also point to validity issues if aspects of the content under investigation are interpreted differently based on specific religious identity. Additionally, self‐identified creationists could serve as a source of validity evidence due to the assumption that creationists should score lower on an evolution acceptance instrument than groups with more scientifically adequate views. Thus, we aim to provide additional validity evidence for often‐used evolution acceptance instruments within a European context (i.e., Germany) by comparing two groups of particular interest for research in science education: preservice biology teachers and self‐identified creationists. Exploring evidence based on (1) internal structure, (2) relationships with other variables, and (3) test content provides arguments for test interpretations' validity. A total of 286 persons (206 preservice biology teachers and 81 self‐identified creationists) participated in a survey comprised of six often‐used evolution acceptance measures (i.e., MATE, GAENE, I‐SEA, ATEVO, Gallup question, and 100 point questions). Overall, our findings indicate that the six applied instruments demonstrate differences concerning their evidence for sound interpretation. In particular, the DIF and dimensionality analyses lead to the assumption that the GAENE may be multidimensional other than theoretically expected. In general, the multi‐item measures were stronger related to each other than to the general public polls. Using an instrument that differentiates between microevolution and macroevolution is advisable for creationist samples or samples with a remarkable share of creationists' views.

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Community College Student Understanding and Perceptions of Evolution

Cited by 6 publications

References 63 publications

Still a private universe? Community college students’ understanding of evolution

Still a private universe? Community college students’ understanding of evolution

Family conversations about species change as support for children's developing understandings of evolution

Validity aspects in measuring evolution acceptance: Evidence from surveys of preservice biology teachers and creationists

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