Teaching evolutionary biology: Pressures, stress, and coping

Abstract

Understanding what teachers need to be more comfortable and confident in their profession is crucial to the future of effective teachers and scientific literacy in public schools. This study focuses on the experiences of Arizona biology teachers in teaching evolution, using a clinical model of stress to identify sources of pressure, the resulting stresses, and coping strategies they employ to alleviate these stresses. We conducted focus groups, one‐on‐one interviews, and written surveys with 15 biology teachers from the Phoenix area. On the basis of their responses, teachers were clustered into three categories: “Conflicted,” who struggle with their own beliefs and the possible impact of their teaching, “Selective,” who carefully avoid difficult topics and situations, and “Scientists,” who see no place for controversial social issues in their science classroom. Teachers from each group felt that they could be more effective in teaching evolution if they possessed the most up‐to‐date information about evolution and genomics, a safe space in which to reflect on the possible social and personal implications with their peers, and access to richer lesson plans for teaching evolution that include not only science but personal stories regarding how the lessons arose, and what problems and opportunities they created. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 41: 791–809, 2004

From Worldviews to Classrooms: Framing Evolution Acceptance in Pre-Service Science Teachers in the Southeastern United States

“…An interesting commonality within this group was the ability to separate scientific knowledge of evolution from personal religious beliefs. Similar to participants in Griffith and Brem's (2004) study, these high acceptance participants fell into what the authors describe as the "scientist teachers" category in their mode of coping with teaching evolution. In both cases, they were brought up as highly engaged and active participants within the Christian Fundamentalist religious culture of the Southeastern United States; however, both experienced distancing events that pushed them to adopt anti-fundamentalist beliefs as adults.…”

“…In effect, they straddled the line between the categories of being scientists and selective teachers (Griffith & Brem, 2004). They both embraced science and were supportive of the teaching of evolution, yet they still had questions due to their experiences with religion and beliefs about God.…”

“…This group tended to see science and religion as complimentary to one another, where the two fit together to provide explanation. Like selective teachers, they chose to believe parts, but not all, of evolution (Griffith & Brem, 2004). A common theme was the explanation of creation through scientific terms, such as recognizing that a "day" to a higher being does not have to be twenty-four hours and finding compatibility in that the events of the seven-day creation follow the same pattern as scientific explanations of the origins of the universe and life, with evolution as the mechanism by which God changes life on Earth.…”

“…We can reject things and still understand them; likewise, we can accept things we do not truly understand (Nehm & Schonfeld, 2007;Smith, 2010a) One thing that is known about people and evolution is that an individual's choice to accept evolution, as well as how they teach or will teach evolution, is complicated (Smith, 2010b). Griffith and Brem (2004) explain that "there is evidence that teachers experience internal and external conflict over teaching evolution" (p. 792) and Smith (2010b) adds that "each individual-both teacher and learner-entering the classroom bring with him or her a personal naive psychology, a cognitive ecology of factors that impact learning" (p. 544). These factors are likely to vary based on the individuals involved, but there should be some sharing of culture among persons from similar backgrounds, allowing for generalization of studies of these factors as well as group-wide applications of responses to address them.…”

Educating Science Teachers for Sustainability

“…Science teacher educators and science teachers overall are often uncomfortable and even refuse to discuss controversial or sociocultural issues in their classrooms (Griffi th & Brem, 2004). However, the organizing idea of sustainability is that the current generation will be able to meet their needs without jeopardizing the ability of future generations to meet their needs at the same or a better level than currently exists.…”