Abstract
BackgroundRelatively little information is available regarding the level of acceptance of evolution and knowledge about evolution in different educational settings in Europe. The aim of the present study is to fill this gap and provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of research regarding evolutionary knowledge and acceptance of students and teachers across Europe, based on a systematic literature review.ResultsWe identified 56 papers for the period 2010–2020, presenting results for 29 European countries. Both knowledge and acceptance of evolution were assessed in 17 studies. Out of 13 instruments most commonly used in the literature, five have been used in the European context so far: ACORNS, CINS, I-SEA, KEE and MATE. Thirty-one other instruments were identified of which 16 were used in studies on knowledge and 15 in studies on acceptance. The extent of knowledge was hard to compare even within groups of the same education level due to the application of different instruments and assessment of different key concepts. Our results illustrate the persistence of misconceptions through all education levels. Comparing acceptance among different education levels and countries revealed a high diversity. However, a lack of evolution in curricula tended to be associated with rejection of evolution in some countries. European studies that investigated both acceptance of evolution and knowledge about evolution varied highly concerning the existence and strength of the relationship between these factors. However, some trends are visible, such as an increase of strength of the relationship the higher the education level.ConclusionsThe present review highlights the lack of a standardized assessment of evolutionary knowledge and acceptance of evolution across Europe and, therefore, of reasonably comparable data. Moreover, the review revealed that only about one-third of all studies on acceptance and/or knowledge about evolution provided evidence for local validity and reliability. We suggest the use of assessment categories for both knowledge and acceptance instruments to allow for interpretation and comparison of sum scores among different sample groups. This, along with prospective comparative research based on similar samples, paves the way for future research aimed at overcoming current biases and inconsistencies in results.
Highlights
Little information is available regarding the level of acceptance of evolution and knowledge about evolution in different educational settings in Europe
For the Inventory of Student Evolution Acceptance (I-SEA), we did not find any suggestions for categories in the original publication, which is why we suggested categories based on the MATE
Other studies on pre-service or inservice teachers in Europe showed weak (Germany: Graf and Soran 2010; Großschedl et al 2014; Turkey: Akyol et al 2012; Greece: Athanasiou et al 2012) or moderate (Germany: Großschedl et al 2018; Nehm et al 2013; Turkey: Deniz and Sahin 2016; Serbia: Stanisavljevic et al 2013; the United Kingdom: Buchan 2019) positive relationships between acceptance and knowledge. Based on these results there is no effect of the used instruments visible as the mentioned studies applied either a combination of the MATE and the Evolution Content Knowledge Test (ECKT) or utilized the MATE and the Conceptual Inventory of Natural Selection (CINS)
Summary
Little information is available regarding the level of acceptance of evolution and knowledge about evolution in different educational settings in Europe. The aim of the present study is to fill this gap and provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of research regarding evolutionary knowledge and acceptance of students and teachers across Europe, based on a systematic literature review. Numerous studies provided evidence of the difficulties students (e.g., Fiedler et al 2018; Göransson et al 2020; Torkar and Šorgo 2020) and even teachers (e.g., Athanasiou et al 2016; Tekkaya et al 2012; Yates and Marek 2013) have in understanding evolution. Scientists and educators have explored understanding of evolution across a variety of educational levels and publics, in order to identify possible causal explanations and barriers that make evolution so difficult to understand (Ha et al 2012; Reiss and Harms 2019; Yates and Marek 2014). The general poor understanding has been attributed to a wide variety of cognitive, epistemological, religious and emotional factors (Alters and Nelson 2002)
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