Educators of Prospective Teachers Hesitate to Embrace Evolution Due to Deficient Understanding of Science/Evolution and High Religiosity

Abstract

Acceptance of evolution by educators of prospective teachers remains superficially studied despite their role in having mentored schoolteachers whose weak support of evolution is known. Here, we contrast the views of New England educators of prospective teachers (n=62; 87% Ph. D./doctorate holders in 32 specializations) with those of the general faculty (n=244; 93% Ph.D./doctorate holders in 40 disciplines), both members of 35 colleges and universities, and with college students (n=827; subsample of the 35 institutions) who were polled on: (1) the controversy evolution vs. creationism vs. intelligent design (ID), (2) their understanding of how science/evolution works, and (3) their religiosity. The educators held intermediate positions in respect to the general faculty and the students: 94% of the general faculty, 75% of the educators, and 63% of the students said they accepted evolution openly; and 82% of the general faculty, 71% of the educators, and 58% of the students thought that evolution is definitely true. Only 3% of the general faculty in comparison to 19% of the educators and 24% of the students thought that evolution and creationism are in harmony. Although 93% of the general faculty, educators, and students knew that evolution relies on common ancestry, 26% of the general faculty, 45% of the educators, and 35% of the students did not know that humans are apes. Remarkably, 15% of the general faculty, 32% of the educators, and 35% of the students believed, incorrectly, that the origin of the human mind cannot be explained by evolution; and 30% of the general faculty, 59% of the educators, and 75% of the students were Lamarckian (=believed in inheritance of acquired traits). For science education: 96% of the general faculty, 86% of the educators, and 71% of the students supported the exclusive teaching of evolution, while 4% of the general faculty, 14% of the educators, and 29% of the students favored equal time to evolution, creationism and ID; note that 92% of the general faculty, 82% of the educators, and 50% of the students perceived ID as either not scientific and proposed to counter evolution based on false claims or as religious doctrine consistent with creationism. The general faculty was the most knowledgeable about science/evolution and the least religious (science index, SI=2.49; evolution index, EI= 2.49; and religiosity index, RI=0.49); the educators reached lower science/evolution but higher religiosity indexes than the general faculty (SI=1.96, EI=1.96, and RI=0.83); and the students were the least knowledgeable about science/ evolution and the most religious (SI=1.80, EI=1.60, and RI=0.89). Understanding of science and evolution were inversely correlated with level of religiosity, and understanding of evolution increased with increasing science literacy. Interestingly, ≈36% of the general faculty, educators and students considered religion to be very important in their lives, and 17% of the general faculty, 34% of the educators, and 28% of the students said they prayed daily. Assessing t...

Evolution Controversy: A Phenomenon Prompted by the Incompatibility between Science and Religious Beliefs

“…To quantitate the levels of religiosity, understanding of science and the evolutionary process and plot them according to the parameters depicted in Figure 1A, we have used three descriptive indexes as characterizers of acceptance of evolution, each ranging from 0 to 3 (least to most religious or knowledgeable about science or evolution): Religiosity Index RI (The Pew Global Attitudes Project 2007), Science Index SI and Evolution Index EI (Paz-y-Miño-C & Espinosa 2011b, 2012a, b, 2013a, b, 2014a, b). These indexes are powerful predictors of religious views worldwide (47 countries, The Pew Global Attitudes Project 2007) and of levels of understanding science and the evolutionary process (e.g.…”

“…These indexes are powerful predictors of religious views worldwide (47 countries, The Pew Global Attitudes Project 2007) and of levels of understanding science and the evolutionary process (e.g. sample of 1,133 U.S. adults with diverse academic backgrounds, from college students to university professors; Paz-y-Miño-C & Espinosa 2011b, 2012a, b, 2013a, b, 2014a, b). …”

“…Science SI : +1 if responders reject the idea that scientific theories are based on opinions by scientists, +1 if they disagree with the notion that scientific arguments are as valid and respectable as their non-scientific counterparts, and +1 if they reject the statement that crime-scene and accident-scene investigators use a different type of scientific method to investigate a crime or an accident; Evolution EI : +1 if responders reject the idea that organisms acquire beneficial traits during their lifetimes and then pass on these traits to their descendants, +1 if they disagree with the notion that during evolution monkeys such as chimpanzees can turn into humans, and +1 if they reject the statement that the origin of the human mind and consciousness cannot be explained by evolution (Paz-y-Miño-C and Espinosa 2011b, 2012a, b, 2013a, b, 2014a, b). …”

“…We have used the indexes above to characterize acceptance of evolution by three distinctive higher-education populations: educators of prospective teachers affiliated with 281 colleges and universities in the U.S. (Paz-y-Miño-C and Espinosa 2012b, 2013b, 2014b), New England research faculty affiliated with 35 colleges and universities (Paz-y-Miño-C and Espinosa 2011b, 2013a, b), and New England college students affiliated with one public, one private-secular and two religious institutions (Paz-y-Miño-C and Espinosa 2009a, b, 2013a, b). Both the New England research faculty's and the students’ samples are particularly useful as reference higher-education populations, or for statistical comparisons with other populations, because they hold the highest scores of acceptance of evolution among university professors and college students in the U.S. (Paz-y-Miño-C and Espinosa 2009a, b, 2011b, 2013a, b, 2014b).…”

“…We also value descriptive accounts of the incompatibilities between science and faith that result from contrasting scientific skepticism , as method to find the truth, versus the sightless trust in religious scripture as source of the truth (Coyne 2012; Stenger 2012). We have examined some of these factors in our own studies (Paz-y-Miño-C and Espinosa 2009a, b, 2011b, 2012b, 2013a, b, c, 2014a, b), as we do it in this article; however, we highlight that, from a research program perspective, IH is a central hypothesis, as a guiding ultimate level of analysis (Paz-y-Miño-C and Espinosa 2014a, b), while the proximate-level studies, or descriptions of the evolution controversy, are auxiliary in essence (auxiliary hypotheses; Lakatos 1978). …”