Intentions and beliefs in students' understanding and acceptance of biological evolution

We examined the intersection of students' understanding and acceptance of evolution and their epistemological beliefs and cognitive dispositions. Based on previous research, we hypothesized there would be a relation between understanding and acceptance. We also hypothesized that students who viewed knowledge as changing and who have a disposition toward open‐minded thinking would be more likely to accept the scientific explanation of human evolution, and that beliefs and dispositions would not be related to acceptance of a topic that is generally perceived as noncontroversial. Ninety‐three undergraduate students enrolled in a nonmajors biology class completed measures of their (a) content knowledge of evolution and photosynthesis and respiration; (b) acceptance of theories of animal evolution, human evolution, and photosynthesis; and (c) epistemological beliefs and cognitive dispositions. Although our findings did reveal a significant relation between knowledge and reported acceptance for photosynthesis, there was no relation between knowledge and acceptance of animal or human evolution. Epistemological beliefs were related to acceptance, but only to the acceptance of human evolution. There was no relation between students' epistemological beliefs and their general acceptance of animal evolution or photosynthesis. Three subscales, Ambiguous Information, Actively Open‐Minded Thinking, and Belief Identification, were significantly correlated with understanding evolutionary theory. We argue these findings underscore the importance of intentional level constructs, such as epistemological beliefs and cognitive dispositions, in the learning of potentially controversial topics. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 40: 510–528, 2003     

Exploring the factors related to acceptance of evolutionary theory among Turkish preservice biology teachers: Toward a more informative conceptual ecology for biological evolution

In this study, using multiple regression analysis, we aimed to explore the factors related to acceptance of evolutionary theory among preservice Turkish biology teachers using conceptual ecology for biological evolution as a theoretical lens. We aimed to determine the extent to which we can account for the variance in acceptance of evolutionary theory by using understanding of evolutionary theory, epistemological beliefs, thinking dispositions, and parents' educational level as independent variables. Preservice biology teachers' thinking dispositions, their understanding of evolutionary theory, and their parents' educational level are positively correlated with acceptance of evolutionary theory. We did not find any significant positive correlation between epistemological beliefs and acceptance of evolution because of low reliability coefficients of subscales of the epistemological beliefs instrument. Together they explained 10.5% of the variance. These results suggest that studying the relationship between acceptance of evolutionary theory and other related factors in a multivariate context is more informative than examining the relationship between acceptance of evolutionary theory and other factors in isolation. Our findings indicate that studying a controversial issue such as acceptance of evolutionary theory in a multivariate fashion, using conceptual ecology as a theoretical lens to interpret the findings, is informative. Our results suggest the inclusion of thinking dispositions in conceptual ecology for biological evolution. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 45: 420–443, 2008     

How strongly does statistical reasoning influence knowledge and acceptance of evolution?

A large body of research has examined students' conceptions of evolution and their relationships to acceptance of evolution. Proficiency in statistical and probabilistic reasoning has long been considered to be an essential feature of evolutionary reasoning, yet almost no empirical work has explored these putative connections. The RaPro instruments have recently been developed to measure statistical reasoning in the contexts of mathematics (RaProMath) and evolution (RaProEvo). Our study provides additional validation of these instruments using Rasch analysis and quantifies the contribution of statistical reasoning to both understanding and accepting evolution. We recruited a large sample (N = 564) of undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory biology course at a large public research university in the United States. Students completed a suite of published instruments that assessed statistical reasoning, evolutionary understanding, and evolutionary acceptance. Our findings indicate that validity inferences derived from RaPro scores generalized to the new sample, and that proficiency in statistical reasoning explained 28% of the variance in evolutionary knowledge and 19% of the variation in evolutionary acceptance. The inclusion of demographic variables into the model significantly increased the explained variance in acceptance. Notably, the variance in evolution acceptance explained by statistical reasoning was comparable to that of thinking dispositions or evolutionary knowledge reported in the literature. This work provides the first large-scale evidence of the role of statistical reasoning in evolutionary knowledge and acceptance and motivates future work to explore how statistical literacy should be integrated into evolution education efforts.     

The Implications of the Cognitive Sciences for the Relation Between Religion and Science Education: The Case of Evolutionary Theory

This paper discusses the relationship between religion and science education in the light of the cognitive sciences. We challenge the popular view that science and religion are compatible, a view that suggests that learning and understanding evolutionary theory has no effect on students?? religious beliefs and vice versa. We develop a cognitive perspective on how students manage to reconcile evolutionary theory with their religious beliefs. We underwrite the claim developed by cognitive scientists and anthropologists that religion is natural because it taps into people??s intuitive understanding of the natural world which is constrained by essentialist, teleological and intentional biases. After contrasting the naturalness of religion with the unnaturalness of science, we discuss the difficulties cognitive and developmental scientists have identified in learning and accepting evolutionary theory. We indicate how religious beliefs impede students?? understanding and acceptance of evolutionary theory. We explore a number of options available to students for reconciling an informed understanding of evolutionary theory with their religious beliefs. To conclude, we discuss the implications of our account for science and biology teachers.     

Evolution in the Caribbean Classroom: A critical analysis of the role of biology teachers and science standards in shaping evolution instruction in Belize

A survey of the literature on evolution instruction provides evidence that teachers’ personal views and understandings can shape instructional approaches and content delivered in science classrooms regardless of established science standards. This study is the first to quantify evolutionary worldviews of in-service teachers in the Caribbean, specifically in Belize, an English-speaking nation with a high school system guided by a regional biology syllabus and strict standardized tests. Using the Measure of Acceptance of the Theory of Evolution (MATE) instrument and knowledge test, we investigated (1) the current level of acceptance and understanding of evolution as given by 97% of high school biology teachers in Belize; (2) the factors associated with acceptance and understanding of evolutionary theory. With an average MATE score of 64.4 and a mean knowledge score of 47.9%, Belizean teachers were classified as having both ‘Low Acceptance’ and ‘Low Understanding’ of evolutionary theory. A positive correlation was found between teacher acceptance and understanding of evolution. A review of the Caribbean Secondary Examination Certificate biology syllabus suggests that evolution plays a minimal role in the high school biology classroom. We believe that Belize presents a unique opening for future training on evolution instruction since 57% of the biology teachers self-proclaim to be unprepared to teach evolution. The results of this study have implications for policy, practice and research with teachers’ acceptance, understanding and confidence in teaching evolution serving as important predictors for instructional approaches used in the biology classroom.     

Is it possible to measure the intuitive acceptance of a mathematical statement?

The main purpose of the present research was to check the possibility of measuring the feeling of “intuitive acceptance”, experienced by a subject when he offers an intuitive solution to a problem. It was postulated that two dimensions have to be considered and combined: The level of confidence and the degree of obviousness. Almost all the questions asked referred to the notion of infinity. The subjects were pupils belonging to grades 8 and 9. Three main categories of problematic situations have been identified:

1. Problems which got high percentages of correct solutions and high levels of intuitive acceptance.
2. Problems which got two types of contradictory solutions, each of them being accepted with moderate intuitiveness.
3. Problems which got low frequencies of correct solutions and high frequencies of typical incorrect solutions, the second category presenting higher levels of intuitive acceptance than the first (counter-intuitive problematic situations).

     

Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture (FOC): a new subject in Russia’s schools

The question of religious education is one of the most controversial questions in the current discussions on religion and politics in Russia. Most notably a new subject, Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture (FOC), is of interest because it differs markedly from Western European approaches to religious education. Referring to ‘Culturology’ FOC combines an introduction into Russian culture and patriotism with moral education and the imparting of knowledge about Orthodox Christianity. According to its own self‐image FOC is a non‐denominational subject, but an analysis of two widespread textbooks will be used to show that FOC is, in all respects, Orthodox.     

Modeling the Interrelationships Among Pre-service Science Teachers’ Understanding and Acceptance of Evolution, Their Views on Nature of Science and Self-Efficacy Beliefs Regarding Teaching Evolution

This study proposed a path model of relationships among understanding and acceptance of evolution, views on nature of science, and self-efficacy beliefs regarding teaching evolution. A total of 415 pre-service science teachers completed a series of self-report instruments for the specified purpose. After the estimation of scale scores using unidimensional IRT models, path analysis suggested that sophisticated views on NOS were associated with higher levels of both understanding and acceptance of evolution, and the higher level of understanding of evolution was related to the higher level of acceptance of evolution. Besides, higher levels of both understanding and acceptance of the theory and na?ve views on NOS were found to be associated with stronger self-efficacy beliefs for teaching evolution effectively.     

Relational Analysis of College Science‐Major Students’ Epistemological Beliefs Toward Science and Conceptions of Learning Science

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest among educational researchers in exploring the relationships between learners’ epistemological beliefs and their conceptions of learning. This study was conducted to investigate these relationships particularly in the domain of science. The participants in this study included 407 Taiwanese college science‐major students. All of them responded to two major questionnaires, one assessing their scientific epistemological beliefs (SEBs) and the other one probing their conceptions of learning science (COLS). The SEB questionnaire included four factors: “certainty,” “source,” “development,” and “justification” of science knowledge. The COLS survey consisted of six factors in a hierarchical order, that is, learning science as “memorizing,” “preparing for tests,” “calculating and practicing,” “increasing one’s knowledge,” “application,” and “understanding and seeing in a new way.” The students’ confidence and interest toward learning science were also assessed by additional questionnaire items. Stepwise regression analyses, in general, showed coherence between students’ SEBs and their COLS, indicating that the sophistication of SEBs was consistent with less agreement with lower‐level COLS (such as “memorizing” and “preparing for tests”) as well as more agreement with higher‐level COLS (such as “understanding and seeing in a new way”). However, the SEB’s “justification” factor was positively related to almost all of COLS factors from the lower‐level to higher‐level. This study finally found that among all of the SEB and COLS factors, the “preparing for tests” factor in COLS was the solely significant variable for predicting students’ interest in science and confidence toward learning science.     

Modeling emotional,cognitive, and behavioral predictors of peer acceptance

Integrating principles of differential emotions theory and social information-processing theory, this study examined a model of emotional, cognitive, and behavioral predictors of peer acceptance in a sample of 201 early elementary school-age children (mean age = 7 years, 5 months). A path analytic model showed that social skills mediated the effect of emotion knowledge on both same- and opposite-sex social preference, but social skills and verbal ability were more strongly related to opposite-sex peer acceptance. These findings suggest that adaptive social skills constitute a mechanism through which children express their emotion knowledge and achieve peer acceptance. Results also supported findings of previous studies that showed that emotion knowledge mediated the effect of verbal ability on social skills. Findings from the present study have specific implications for emotion-centered prevention programs that aim to improve children's socioemotional competence and enhance the likelihood of peer acceptance.     

On the Practical Interpretability of Cross‐Lagged Panel Models: Rethinking a Developmental Workhorse

Reciprocal feedback processes between experience and development are central to contemporary developmental theory. Autoregressive cross‐lagged panel (ARCL) models represent a common analytic approach intended to test such dynamics. The authors demonstrate that—despite the ARCL model's intuitive appeal—it typically (a) fails to align with the theoretical processes that it is intended to test and (b) yields estimates that are difficult to interpret meaningfully. Specifically, using a Monte Carlo simulation and two empirical examples concerning the reciprocal relation between spanking and child aggression, it is shown that the cross‐lagged estimates derived from the ARCL model reflect a weighted—and typically uninterpretable—amalgam of between‐ and within‐person associations. The authors highlight one readily implemented respecification that better addresses these multiple levels of inference.     

Conceptual Resources in Self‐developed Explanatory Models: The importance of integrating conscious and intuitive knowledge

This study explores the spontaneous explanatory models children construct, critique, and revise in the context of tasks in which children need to predict, observe, and explain phenomena involving magnetism. It further investigates what conceptual resources students use, and in what ways they use them, to construct explanatory models, and the obstacles preventing them from constructing a useful explanatory model. Our findings indicate that several of the children were able to construct explanatory models. However, of the six children interviewed multiple times (three third‐graders and three sixth‐graders), only one was consistently able to critique and revise her models to arrive at a consistent, coherent, and sophisticated explanatory model. Connecting intuitive knowledge and abstract knowledge was important in her construction of a coherent and sophisticated explanatory model. Students who relied only on intuitive knowledge constructed tentative and non‐sophisticated explanatory models. Students who relied only on verbal‐symbolic knowledge at an abstract level without connection with their intuition also did not construct coherent and sophisticated models. These results indicate that instruction should help students to become meta‐conceptually aware and connect their verbal‐symbolic knowledge and intuition in order to construct explanatory models to make sense of abstract scientific knowledge.     

Human affection exchange: III. discriminative parental solicitude in men's affectionate communication with their biological and nonbiological sons

Although several investigations have addressed the nature of communication in men's relationships with their sons, relatively few have focused on positive interaction patterns, such as the exchange of affection, even though affection is of considerable importance to relational maintenance and satisfaction. According to affection exchange theory, affection is such a valuable relational resource because of the contributions it makes to humans’ long‐term viability and reproductive success. As such a resource, it should, thus, be governed by adaptive motivations, among which is the motivation for parents to invest in their children in ways that maximize their long‐term evolutionary success. Using the theory of discriminative parental solicitude, we predicted differences in the amount of affection men communicate to their biological sons, adopted sons, and step‐sons. We tested our predictions in two studies involving a total of 384 males. We discuss implications of the results for explaining the superordinate evolutionary motivations governing affectionate communication.     

An inner‐city school mentor: a narrative inquiry of the life experiences of ‘Daddy’

A two‐year ethnographic observation of an inner‐city high school in Los Angeles, USA, indicated that the principal, who was extremely dedicated to at‐risk students and possessed a unique style of mentoring, played a major role in students academic achievement. We — the principal and the researcher who observed the school – inquired about the principal’s life experiences through interviews of the principal, his family members, school staff and students. We realized that the principal’s mentoring style coincided with the notion of a contemporary father model — a deeply involved and nurturing parent who establishes reciprocal caring relationships with his children. We also discovered that the principal gained knowledge about mentoring from his own mentors, and his commitment to at‐risk inner‐city students resulted from his personal experience as an at‐risk immigrant student.     

论直觉思维与语感教学

直觉思维就是在早已获得的经验、知识的基础上,凭借思维的“感觉”直觉地把握事物的本质及其规律的心理过程。其特点表现为依附性;非逻辑性;潜意识性;创造性。语感教学的功能既体现了语文教学改革的方向,又是语文能力的核心,语文教学必须重视对学生语感的培养,其途径与方法多种多样,而通过直觉思维训练来培养语感则是一个行之有效不可忽视的重要环节。     

Entrepreneurialism and the transformation of Russian universities

Like many Western knowledge‐practices, experiential learning is seen to require what is, in effect, an act of self‐dismemberment, a splitting of the head from the body that denies the connectedness of knowledge to the body and thus loses sight of knowledge as a product of corporeally and emotionally grounded human life. This article first traces the history through which modernist knowledge‐practices were predicated on the rejection of the experiencing body and examines the impact of the resultant epistemology on power relationships. It then suggests that, as a function of memory, experiential learning is more properly understood as an act of re‐membering. It argues that experience is itself located in the body as well as in the social and material locations that bodies invariably occupy — and asks what a theory of experiential learning might look like that re‐members body and mind.     

Integrative assessment of Evolutionary theory acceptance and knowledge levels of Biology undergraduate students from a Brazilian university

The integrative role that Evolutionary theory plays within Biology is recognised by most scientific authors, as well as in governmental education policies, including Brazilian policies. However, teaching and learning evolution seems problematic in many countries, and Brazil is among those. Many factors may affect teachers’ and students’ perceptions towards evolution, and studies can help to reveal those factors. We used a conceptual questionnaire, the Measure of Acceptance of the Theory of Evolution (MATE) instrument, and a Knowledge test to assess (1) the level of acceptance and understanding of 23 undergraduate Biology students nearing the end of their course, (2) other factors that could affect these levels, including course structure, and (3) the most difficult topics regarding evolutionary biology. The results of this study showed that the students, on average, had a ‘Very High Acceptance’ (89.91) and a ‘Very Low Knowledge’ (59.42%) of Evolutionary theory, and also indicated a moderate positive correlation between the two (r?=?0.66, p?=?.001). The most difficult topics were related to the definition of evolution and dating techniques. We believe that the present study provides evidence for policymakers to reformulate current school and university curricula in order to improve the teachers’ acceptance and understanding of evolution and other biological concepts, consequently, helping students reduce their misconceptions related to evolutionary biology.     

Intuitive Interference in Probabilistic Reasoning

One theoretical framework which addresses students’ conceptions and reasoning processes in mathematics and science education is the intuitive rules theory. According to this theory, students’ reasoning is affected by intuitive rules when they solve a wide variety of conceptually non-related mathematical and scientific tasks that share some common external features. In this paper, we explore the cognitive processes related to the intuitive rule more A–more B and discuss issues related to overcoming its interference. We focused on the context of probability using a computerized “Probability Reasoning – Reaction Time Test.” We compared the accuracy and reaction times of responses that are in line with this intuitive rule to those that are counter-intuitive among high-school students. We also studied the effect of the level of mathematics instruction on participants’ responses. The results indicate that correct responses in line with the intuitive rule are more accurate and shorter than correct, counter-intuitive ones. Regarding the level of mathematics instruction, the only significant difference was in the percentage of correct responses to the counter-intuitive condition. Students with a high level of mathematics instruction had significantly more correct responses. These findings could contribute to designing innovative ways of assisting students in overcoming the interference of the intuitive rules.     

Cross-cultural Study of Understanding of Scale and Measurement: Does the everyday use of US customary units disadvantage US students?

Quantitative and qualitative studies of various aspects of the perception of biotechnology were conducted among 469 Slovenian high school students of average age 17 years. Our research aimed to explore relationships among students' pre-knowledge of molecular and human genetics, and their attitudes to four specific biotechnological applications. These applications—Bt corn, genetically modified (GM) salmon, somatic and germ line gene therapy (GT)—were investigated from the viewpoints of usefulness, moral acceptance and risk perception. In addition, patterns and quality of moral reasoning related to the biotechnological applications from the aspect of moral acceptability were examined. Clear gender differences were found regarding the relationship between our students' pre-knowledge of genetics and their attitudes to biotechnological applications. While females with a better genetics background expressed a higher risk perception in the case of GM salmon, their similarly well-educated male colleagues emphasized the risk associated with the use of germ line GT. With all four biotechnological applications, patterns of both rationalistic—deontological and teleological—and intuitive moral reasoning were identified. Students with poorer genetics pre-knowledge applied an intuitive pattern of moral reasoning more frequently than their peers with better pre-knowledge. A pattern of emotive reasoning was detected only in the case of GM salmon. A relatively low quality of students' moral reasoning, as demonstrated by their brief and small number of supporting justifications (explanations), show that there is a strong need for practising skills of argumentation about socio-scientific issues in Slovenian high schools on a much larger scale. The implications for future research and classroom applications are discussed.