Abstract
BackgroundFostering pre-service teachers’ acceptance of evolutionary theory and their preference for its teaching implies knowledge of the factors which influence both constructs. This study aims to explore how cognitive (knowledge of evolution), affective (attitude towards religion and science, scientism, and creationism), and contextual factors (age, gender, parents’ educational qualification, semester, teacher education program) are related to acceptance and preference. Furthermore, the study aims at exploring the relationship between acceptance and preference.MethodsA total of 180 German pre-service biology teachers participated in the study.ResultsOur regression analysis reveals that the acceptance of evolutionary theory is significantly related to creationism, the attitude towards science, the knowledge of evolution, gender, and the pre-service teachers’ semester. Furthermore, the regression analysis shows that a preference for teaching evolution is significantly related to creationism, the knowledge of evolution, and also gender. Interestingly, after controlling for these variables, the attitude towards religion is not significantly related to either the acceptance of evolutionary theory or the preference for teaching evolution. Finally, the regression analysis shows that acceptance and preference are weakly, but significantly related.ConclusionsFor teacher education, these results point out that religiosity should not be considered a barrier to acceptance and preference in principle. Moreover, fostering a profound knowledge of evolution could be one way to improve teaching practices.
Highlights
Fostering pre-service teachers’ acceptance of evolutionary theory and their preference for its teaching implies knowledge of the factors which influence both constructs
Other states (e.g., Colorado, Montana) feed doubts of evolution by explicitly teaching the strengths and weaknesses of evolutionary theory which might pave the way for creationism or intelligent design (Lerner et al 2012)
Validity check As previously mentioned, our study aims to investigate whether pre-service teachers’ acceptance of evolutionary theory (ACCEPTANCE measure) and intention to teach both evolutionary theory and unscientific alternatives (INTENTION measure) are related to four selected attributes from the affective domain
Summary
Fostering pre-service teachers’ acceptance of evolutionary theory and their preference for its teaching implies knowledge of the factors which influence both constructs. Conceptual ecology has been used as a theoretical framework to describe the influence of particular factors on the acceptance of evolutionary theory. Conceptual ecology as a framework for learning acceptance of evolutionary theory The general idea of conceptual ecology traces back to the early stages of conceptual change theory (cf Pintrich et al 1993; Posner et al 1982). As one merit of the so-called ‘warming trend’ in conceptual change – largely influenced by Pintrich et al (1993) – both affective and intentional level constructs such as epistemological beliefs, belief identification, and willingness to question one’s beliefs were integrated into the idea (Sinatra et al 2003)
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