Insights Into the Diversity of Attitudes Concerning Evolution and Creation: A Multidimensional Approach

Abstract

ABSTRACT:The main aim of this paper is to describe high school students' attitudes concerning evolution and creation, with a focus on (1) attitudes toward evolutionary theory, (2) attitudes toward the Biblical accounts of creation, (3) creationist beliefs, and (4) scientistic beliefs. Latent class analyses revealed seven attitude profiles in a sample of 1672 German high school students. In contrast with the prevailing focus on creationism in science education research, a scientistic attitude profile (22%) rather than a creationist attitude profile (4%) characterized the largest group in this sample. The remaining five profiles account for three-fourths of the sample and describe a range of different positions, that is, noncreationist and nonscientistic positions. Moreover, the groups of students who belonged to different attitude profiles differed significantly in terms of further variables: (a) perception of conflict between science and theology, (b) attitudes toward science, (c) attitudes toward religion, (d) understanding of the nature of science, and (e) understanding of the nature of Christian theology. The benefit of the presented approach is discussed in the context of previous studies that focused on the acceptance of evolutionary theory. Because we found evidence for a wide variety of attitudes, implications for teaching and learning evolution are discussed.

Teleology as a tacit dimension of teaching and learning evolution: A sociological approach to classroom interaction in science education

“…In our study, neither the teacher nor the students made reference to creationism because in Germany, creationist beliefs are rather rare and not expected to be predominant in science classrooms, while attitudes toward evolutionary theory are generally positive (Konnemann, Asshoff, & Hammann, ). Despite these favorable conditions for teaching evolution, we argue, based on our results, that science education faces the challenge of addressing teleology as a cognitive constraint.…”

Exploring Secondary School Students’ Stances on the Predictive and Explanatory Power of Science

“…There is a basis to say that secondary school science teachers resist talking about the nature, power and limitations of science and that students have few opportunities to develop their criticality (Konnemann et al 2016;Kötter and Hammann 2017). We hope that surveys and studies like the present one will motivate and help teachers to develop pedagogies to increase students' understanding and criticality.…”

Primary school students’ perspectives on questions that bridge science and religion: Findings from a survey study in England

“…2016Wilkinson, 2005;Hansson & Redfors, 2007;Deniz et al, 2008;Smith, 2010;Ha et al, 2012;Berkman & Plutzer, 2015;Barnes et al, 2017). Surveys conducted in England and Germany revealed that secondary school students' tendency to see science and religion as conflicting is frequently associated with a conflation of science and scientism (see Astley & Francis, 2010;Konnemann et al, 2016). Surveys conducted in England and Germany revealed that secondary school students' tendency to see science and religion as conflicting is frequently associated with a conflation of science and scientism (see Astley & Francis, 2010;Konnemann et al, 2016).…”

“…One of the key findings of these studies is that secondary school students frequently hold narrow and polarised positions on the natures of science and religion (Martin-Hansen, 2008;Smith & Scharmann, 2008;Ibrahim et al, 2009). Surveys conducted in England and Germany revealed that secondary school students' tendency to see science and religion as conflicting is frequently associated with a conflation of science and scientism (see Astley & Francis, 2010;Konnemann et al, 2016). Scientism is a stance which includes believing that science is the only valid way to construct knowledge and that nothing exists beyond the material universe (Stenmark, 2001).…”