Student teachers' attitudes towards and willingness to teach evolution in a changing South African environment

Abrie, Amelia L.

doi:10.1080/00219266.2010.9656205

Cited by 25 publications

(36 citation statements)

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“…Rutledge and Mitchell's study (2002) of 552 practicing secondary biology teachers in Indiana revealed that 67% of participants accepted evolution, with 19% undecided and 14% not accepting. Abrie (2010) found that only 40% of 46 secondary preservice teachers in South Africa accepted evolution, with 12% of teachers designated as uncertain, and 48% being rejecters. Kose (2010) found that 30 of 38 Turkish secondary biology teachers rejected evolution.…”

Section: Nature Of Teachers' Acceptancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Acceptance has been measured primarily through multiple choice questionnaires or surveys with Likert-scale responses (Aguillard 1999;Fowler and Meisels 2010;Kose 2010;Losh and Nzekwe 2011a, b;Scharmann 1994;Shankar and Skoog 1993). Many researchers have used items from Rutledge and Warden's (1999) instrument, the Measure of Acceptance of the Theory of Evolution (MATE) (Abrie 2010;Deniz et al 2008;Kim and Nehm 2011;McCrory and Murphy 2009;Rutledge and Warden 2000;Trani 2004). Other methods used to understand teachers' acceptance of evolution have included interviews (Aguillard 1999;Boujaoude et al 2011;Goldston and Kyzer 2009) and concept maps (Rutledge and Mitchell 2002).…”

Section: Summary Of Major Findingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Evolutionary content knowledge has been measured primarily through the use of multiple-choice questionnaires developed by separate research teams (Abrie 2010;Kim and Nehm 2011;Moore and Kraemer 2005;Rutledge and Warden 2000;Vlaardingerbroek and Roederer 1997). Questions focus on factual information related to evolution, for example understanding the age of the Earth or identifying the core concepts associated with natural selection (Rutledge and Warden 2000).…”

Section: Review: Major Themes Of Research On K-12 Teachers and Evolutmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By the 12th grade, students are expected to understand the role of genes and mutation in evolution, evidence for evolution, natural selection, speciation, descent from common ancestry, and evolutionary relationships. Evolution is included in the national curriculum in many countries, including the United Kingdom (Cleaves & Toplis 2007), The Netherlands (Schilders et al 2009), South Korea (Kim and Nehm 2011), and South Africa (Abrie 2010), among others.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Examining the evolution education literature with a focus on teachers: major findings, goals for teacher preparation, and directions for future research

Sickel

Friedrichsen

2013

Evo Edu Outreach

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The theory of evolution is the fundamental backbone to the discipline of biology, yet many students possess misunderstandings. The teacher is the most important school-based factor in student learning, and therefore to improve students' understandings of evolution, we must better prepare teachers. The purpose of this paper is three-fold. First, we reviewed empirical research studies focused on K-12 teachers regarding evolution education from 1993 to 2011 with the purpose of identifying major themes of research and corresponding findings. Second, we used our understandings of current findings to inform the development and articulation of five goals for teacher preparation. Third, we discuss implications of this work for teacher preparation initiatives and directions of future research. We found that current evolution education research specific to K-12 teachers falls within four major themes, which collectively inform the development of five goals for preparing teachers to teach evolution. We argue that teachers should: (1) develop content knowledge of evolution; (2) develop understandings of the nature of science related to evolution; (3) develop acceptance of evolution as valid within science; (4) develop knowledge of and strategies for handling the public controversy; and (5) develop pedagogical content knowledge for teaching evolution. Based on our review, evolution courses and professional development initiatives for K-12 teachers should integrate the five goals, with more attention to teaching evolution in the classroom. Investigating the nature of teachers' acceptance of evolution and pedagogical content knowledge for teaching evolution are areas of research in need of continued pursuit.

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Section: Nature Of Teachers' Acceptancementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Summary Of Major Findingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Review: Major Themes Of Research On K-12 Teachers and Evolutmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Examining the evolution education literature with a focus on teachers: major findings, goals for teacher preparation, and directions for future research

Sickel

Friedrichsen

2013

Evo Edu Outreach

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“…There are four areas of concern: Firstly, teachers' inadequate content knowledge regarding evolution Pillay 2011), probably because many of them had not received appropriate evolution-related education or training prior to the implementation of the new curriculum (Abrie 2010;Pillay 2011;Stears 2006) and because 'training for both Curriculum 2005 and the National Curriculum Statement was shown to be too superficial and too generic' and 'decontextualized and unsupported', resulting in poor implementation of policies (Department of Basic Education 2009:55-56). Secondly, in addition to teachers lacking content knowledge, several studies have found that many South African teachers (Molefe 2013;Naudé 2013;Ngxola and Sanders 2009;Pillay 2011;Yalvac 2011) and student-teachers (Abrie 2010;Stears 2012) have misconceptions about evolution. Thirdly, many teachers (Naudé 2013;Pillay 2011;Sanders 2010;Sanders and Ngxola 2009;Yalvac 2011) and student-teachers (Abrie 2010) have voiced attitude-related concerns (their own, parents', or learners') about a potential religion/evolution controversy, some expressing an unwillingness to teach evolution.…”

Section: Problems Motivating the Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

The possible influence of curriculum statements and textbooks on misconceptions: The case of evolution

Sanders¹,

Makotsa²

2016

Educ. as change.

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Curriculum statements and textbooks are considered to be vital support tools for teachers, particularly during times of curriculum innovation. A recent change in South Africa was the controversial inclusion of evolution in the school curriculum, raising serious concerns amongst biology teachers regarding the adequacy of their content and pedagogical content knowledge for teaching the topic. Widespread 'misconceptions' about evolution make teaching this topic difficult for biology teachers worldwide. Identifying the sources of errors is an essential step needed before addressing them. This study explored curriculum support materials as a possible source of misconceptions, using content analysis of the South African school Natural Sciences curriculum statement and six Grade 7-9 Natural Sciences textbooks from two different publishers, and investigated 'curriculum slippages' between the 'formal' and 'perceived' curricula. The aim was to determine the nature and extent of unscientific ideas about evolution, and 217 Sanders and MakotsaCurriculum materials as a source of misconceptions to see how authors dealt with potential misconceptions. Errors were found in the curriculum statement and in the textbooks, where they escalated in frequency. Latent problems associated with ambiguous wording of statements posed further problems. Although this paper uses evolution as an example, lessons learned about curriculum materials as a possible influence on misconceptions are applicable to other subjects.Keywords: curriculum support materials, textbooks, misconceptions, curriculum slippages, evolution, natural selectionIn times of curriculum innovation textbooks become important props for teachers, particularly if they are inadequately prepared to implement new curriculum content. However, an important assumption is that such support materials will be scientifically accurate. If they contain errors, teachers with poor content knowledge may not be in a position to recognise mistakes, which are thus likely to be transmitted to pupils. This paper focuses on an investigation of curriculum statements and textbooks as a possible source of misconceptions, as well as how the textbooks identified and addressed common misconceptions. We have used the umbrella term 'misconceptions' for this paper in the commonly understood everyday sense, referring to incorrect ideas, as this is how most teachers and the public are likely to understand the term. Because document analysis was used for this study it was not possible to discriminate between ideas which have been mentally constructed by the document authors (the correct technical meaning of 'misconceptions') and 'errors', which have been acquired from some outside source. THE CONTEXT OF THE STUDYThe inclusion of evolution in the South African school curriculumThe radical revision of the South African school curriculum, progressively implemented by the newly elected government's education department between 1998 and 2008, was characterised by several changes, one of which was a modernisi...

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Evolutionary Theory as a Controversial Topic in Science Curriculum Around the Globe

Deniz

Borgerding

2018

Evolution Education Around the Globe

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Student teachers' attitudes towards and willingness to teach evolution in a changing South African environment

Abstract: This article investigates the attitudes of South African student teachers towards the theory of evolution and their

Cited by 25 publications

References 12 publications

Examining the evolution education literature with a focus on teachers: major findings, goals for teacher preparation, and directions for future research

Examining the evolution education literature with a focus on teachers: major findings, goals for teacher preparation, and directions for future research

The possible influence of curriculum statements and textbooks on misconceptions: The case of evolution

Evolutionary Theory as a Controversial Topic in Science Curriculum Around the Globe

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