Experiences and practices of evolution instructors at Christian universities that can inform culturally competent evolution education.

M. Elizabeth Barnes,Sara E. Brownell

doi:10.1002/sce.21317

Abstract

Students’ religious beliefs and religious cultures have been shown to be the main factors predicting whether they will accept evolution, yet college biology instructors teaching evolution at public institutions often have religious beliefs and cultures that are different from their religious students. This difference in religious beliefs and cultures may be a barrier to effective evolution education. To explore when evolution instructors have similar religious cultures and beliefs as their students, we interviewed 32 evolution instructors at Christian universities nationwide about their practices and experiences teaching evolution. Christian university instructors emphasized teaching for acceptance of evolution while holding an inclusive teaching philosophy that they perceived led to a safe environment for students. Additionally, almost all instructors reported using practices that have been shown to increase student acceptance of evolution and reduce student conflict between evolution and religion. Further, we found that these instructors perceived that their own religious backgrounds have guided their decisions to teach evolution to their students in a culturally competent way. We discuss how these data, combined with past research literature on public college instructors, indicate that cultural competence could be a useful new framework for promoting effective evolution education in higher education institutions.

Highlights

IntroductionEvolution is simultaneously one of the most important components of undergraduate life science education and one of the most controversial among college biology students
1.1 Evolution is important, yet controversialEvolution is simultaneously one of the most important components of undergraduate life science education and one of the most controversial among college biology students
Because of the misalignment of religious cultures and religious beliefs between instructors teaching evolution and students learning evolution, we propose using a lens of cultural competence to establish instructional practices to reduce student perceived conflict between religion and evolution

Summary

Introduction

Evolution is simultaneously one of the most important components of undergraduate life science education and one of the most controversial among college biology students. The national report Vision and Change, a product of over 500 biologists and biology educators across the country, identified the theory of evolution as one of five core concepts of biology (AAAS, 2011). Research has shown that up to 50% of students in introductory biology classes can reject important aspects of evolution (Rice, Olson, & Colbert, 2010) and that ∼15% of high school biology teachers, who have a college-level education of biology, advocate for creationism in their classes for at least 1 hour per semester (Berkman & Plutzer, 2011). The lack of acceptance of evolution, the very foundation of biology, has led to a major research thrust to determine the sources of evolution rejection and effective interventions for increasing acceptance (Glaze & Goldston, 2015; Hermann, 2007; Lloyd-Strovas & Bernal, 2012; Smith, 2009, 2010)

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