Creationist and evolutionist views of South African teachers with different religious affiliations

Abstract

HOW TO CITE:Stears M, Clément P, James A, Dempster E. Creationist and evolutionist views of South African teachers with different religious affiliations. S Afr J Sci. 2016;112(5/6), Art. #2015-0226, 10 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10. 17159/ sajs.2016/20150226 Concerns have been raised in the scientific community that many teachers do not accept evolution as a scientific, testable phenomenon, and this is evident in their teaching. The non-acceptance of evolution theory is often heavily influenced by religious groups that endeavour to eliminate evolution from the curriculum. In South Africa, the inclusion of evolution in the curriculum is a recent event. This study focused on teachers' views of evolution in relation to their religious affiliations. A questionnaire was developed and was validated by the Biohead-Citizen Project, and was then administered to more than 300 South African teachers and student teachers. Equal numbers of pre-service and in-service teachers were sampled. The groups included equal numbers of biology, English, and generalist teachers at primary school level. The results showed differences between teachers from different religions with regard to their views of evolution. Among teachers who identified as agnostic or atheist, 17% held creationist views. Among teachers who identified as Protestant, other Christian, or Muslim, 70% held creationist views. This study also examined, for the first time, the views of teachers belonging to religions not included in previous research. Of these, only 25% of Hindus held creationist views. Fewer adherents of African Independent Churches held creationist views compared with teachers from traditional Protestant denominations; for example, only 30% of Zionist followers and 40% of Shembe followers held creationist views. This study adds important knowledge by including the views of teachers from religions not previously researched.

A New Measure of Students’ Perceived Conflict between Evolution and Religion (PCoRE) Is a Stronger Predictor of Evolution Acceptance than Understanding or Religiosity

“…Non-Catholic Christian students are approximately one-quarter of introductory undergraduate biology students (Barnes et al, 2020b), suggesting that reducing perceived conflict among this group could impact a sizable proportion of undergraduate biology students and their acceptance of evolution. These results corroborate past studies demonstrating that Muslim individuals may experience high perceived conflict with their religions and evolution (Dagher and BouJaoude, 1997;BouJaoude et al, 2011;Deniz et al, 2008;Yousuf et al, 2011;Asghar, 2013;Athanasiou and Papadopoulou, 2015;Yok et al, 2015;Stears et al, 2016;Rachmatullah et al, 2018;Unsworth and Voas, 2018;Barnes et al, under review). Future studies could use the PCoRE instrument to explore ways to reduce perceived conflict among Muslim students.…”

Life Sciences Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge When Addressing Socioscientific Issues in The Topic Evolution

“…There were however some who viewed the inclusion of evolution particularly evolution of humankind as invasive to their religious beliefs and those of their learners. These views were also found by previous researchers (Asghar, 2013;Clément, James, & Dempster, 2016;Reiss, 2019) where teachers lacked confidence in the theory. There were teachers who showed a lack of understanding of the need to teach the topic evolution and showed limited TSPCK, which Malcolm, Mavhunga and Rollnick (2019) describe as teachers' capabilities in transforming the comprehension of a given topic into formats that are suitable for teaching and comprehension by learners.…”

“…Evolution is, thus, a controversial topic to teach in the life sciences (biology) classroom where there are learners from diverse religious and cultural backgrounds. Concerns have been raised in the scientific community that many teachers, and the public, do not accept the theory of evolution as a scientifically testable phenomenon, and this is evident in the way evolution is taught (Clément, James, & Dempster, 2016).…”

“…The life sciences teacher becomes a significant determinant in the successful teaching of the theory of evolution in school science (Glaze, 2018). This is against a background that in South Africa, the teaching of the theory of evolution continues to lack a proper direction within many life sciences classrooms (Stears, Clément, James, & Dempster, 2016).…”

Percepção de professores sobre genes e ambiente: uma revisão de escopo

“…Alguns deles apresentam dados que mostram relações opostas entre crenças religiosas e aceitação da teoria da evolução (Glaze & Goldston, 2019;Irez e Bakanai, 2011;Kim & Nehm, 2011;Losh and Nzekwe, 2011;Silva et al, 2019;Stears et al, 2016). Dobzhansky (2013) argumenta que nada em biologia faz sentido exceto à luz da evolução, esta revisão defende a mesma visão epistemológica.…”