Relationship between achievement and students' acceptance of evolution or creation in an upper‐level evolution course

Students often hold strong attitudes regarding topics they encounter during their studies, and many instructors feel that these attitudes can have strong effects on students' performance. We characterized students' attitudes toward evolution and investigated the influence of students' attitudes (pre‐course and post‐course) regarding evolution on their performance in an evolution course, measured as their final grade. We found our students to hold positive attitudes toward evolution; these attitudes became more positive following the course. The most significant change in attitude occurred in the group of students initially undecided toward evolution. We also found that attitudes prior to the course had little influence on later achievement; however, at the end of the course, students' attitudes were positively related to final grades, although the effect was small. We argue that pedagogical techniques directly addressing students' attitudes help reduce the influence of attitudes (especially prior attitudes) on achievement. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 43: 7–24, 2006     

Time past: impacts of ICT on the pedagogic discourse in the Interactive project

The ‘pedagogic discourse’ can describe the power relations and fields of influence within schools. This article extends the approach to include ICT-mediated learning in schools by considering evidence from the InterActive project, undertaken by the University of Bristol, England, in 2000–04. The article also considers how the pedagogic discourse can complement post-Vygotskian sociocultural models of learning. ICT is presented as a ‘recontextualising field’ that exerts influence by weakening the classification and framing of the discourse. Successful uses of ICT tend to favour ‘invisible’ pedagogies: collaborative modes of active working with shared competences, in lessons containing elements of ‘discovery’. Tensions can arise if the dominant discourse is a ‘visible’ pedagogy that favours individual performance, with the teacher as the voice of authority and controller of the discourse. These tensions can lead to ICT being marginalised or discredited by teachers or lead to new modalities of pedagogy.