The foundations: How education major influences basic science knowledge and pseudoscience beliefs

Abstract

Although many pseudoscience beliefs are popular, most American research examines creation/evolution among liberal arts majors, general public adults, or, infrequently, secondary school science teachers, thus truncating the range and the populations it studies It is especially critical to study future elementary educators because of the science interest “watershed” (particularly among girls) during middle school,. Because teachers have considerable influence on youth, we studied very basic science knowledge and beliefs about extraterrestrials, magic, Biblical creation, and evolution among 540 female and 123 male education majors. Compared with other education students, future elementary educators rejected evolution, supported some form of “creationism”, were comparable on other pseudoscience topics, and accessed less science media. Religious and media variables were important predictors of creation/evolution beliefs. Implications are discussed for how faculty may address pseudoscience beliefs among education majors.