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Exploring the Social, Moral, and Temporal Qualities of Pre-Service

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Exploring the Social, Moral, and Temporal Qualities of Pre-Service Exploring the Social, Moral, and Temporal Qualities of Pre-Service Teachers’ Narratives of Evolution Deirdre Hahn Division of Psychology in Education, College of Education, Arizona State University, PO Box 878409, Tempe, Arizona 85287 [email protected] Sarah K Brem Division of Psychology in Education, College of Education, Arizona State University, PO Box 870611, Tempe, Arizona 85287 [email protected] Steven Semken Department of Geological Sciences, Arizona State University, PO Box 871404, Tempe, Arizona 85287 [email protected] ABSTRACT consequences of accepting evolutionary theory. That is, both evolutionists and creationists tend to believe that Elementary, middle, and secondary school teachers may accepting evolutionary theory will result in a greater experience considerable unease when teaching evolution ability to justify or engage in racist or selfish behavior, in the context of the Earth or life sciences (Griffith and and will reduce people's sense of purpose and Brem, in press). Many factors may contribute to their self-determination. Further, Griffith and Brem (in press) discomfort, including personal conceptualizations of the found that in-service science teachers frequently share evolutionary process - especially human evolution, the these same beliefs and to avoid controversy in the most controversial aspect of evolutionary theory. classroom, the teachers created their own boundaries in Knowing more about the mental representations of an curriculum and teaching practices. evolutionary process could help researchers to There is a historical precedent for uneasiness around understand the challenges educators face in addressing evolutionary theory, particularly given its use to explain scientific principles. These insights could inform and justify actions performed in the name of science. educators of alternative methods in providing support Guthrie (1998) suggested examples of gross misuse of and assistance. In this study, we examined pre-service science related to an exploitation of the principles and teachers' conceptual representations of an evolutionary language used to describe evolution: the "Kallikak bad process through their personal narratives of evolution seed" philosophy of human reproduction; Tuskeegee for an imaginary humanoid species on a far-off planet. non-consented research on Black men; government The imaginary creature participants described tended to sanctioned sterilizations performed in prisons and resemble humans in both form and evolutionary history. mental institutions; and intelligence testing used to The narratives had a tendency to link evolutionary extend "racially inferior" labels to Native Americans and changes with social and moral consequences. Those Mexican Americans. whose narratives closely paralleled human evolution Post-World War I American was marked with also seemed to have difficulty envisioning evolutionary disillusionment and fear regarding human progress in changes that would take the species past current human the face of violence and worldwide conflict (Moore, 1998, development and into their evolutionary future. The 1999). American and European biologists, alike, believed connection among social and moral issues, evolution, early interpretations of Darwin's concept of natural and difficulties envisioning the future may provide selection was distorted by the German militarism to important clues into pre-service teachers' promote and create war (Farber, 1994). Moore claimed conceptualizations of human evolution. Addressing that post-WWI American culture developed a personal barriers and misunderstandings that might "...nostalgia for the relative simplicity of prewar life, impede geoscience education may become an effective combined with a perceived decline in morality [that] led tool for teaching scientific principles. many people to rely increasingly on their religious faith for stability and comfort" (p. 487). The 1925 Scopes trial exemplifies the public INTRODUCTION treatment of evolutionary theory following the first World War whereby human evolution became tied to Few people remain indifferent about teaching ideas of evil, bigotry, morality, atheism, and images of evolutionary theory in America (Dennett, 1995). monkeys turning into man (Moore, 1998, 1999). The Research regarding the teaching and learning of atrocities committed by the Nazis during World War II evolutionary theory has focused heavily on student further stigmatized evolutionary theory in the public comprehension and misconceptions (Bishop and eye. Postwar America saw an even deeper resurgence of Anderson, 1990; Cobern, 1994; Dawkins, 1976; Demastes faith and morality, particularly by American et al., 1995; Moreland and Reynolds, 1999; Piburn et al., fundamentalists, who turned to education and politics to 1986; Zimmerman, 1987), or on curricular and policy strengthen the image of morality. Today, fears of issues (Shankar and Skoog, 1993; Skoog, 1984). Less abandoned faith, unethical scientific practices, concern attention has been given to the social and personal for human morality, and a loss of purpose continue to be consequences that arise from the complex and coupled with evolutionary theory (Brem et al., 2003; controversial relationship between evolutionary theory Dawkins, 2003; Gitt, 1995; Ham, 1998). and issues such as racism, social Darwinism, eugenics, Wolpoff and Caspari (1997) re veal that evo lu tion ary and other ethical dilemmas (Farber, 1994; Franklin, 1991; bi ol ogy is fre quently cat e go rized as the study of hu man Moore, 1998, 1999; Griffith and Brem, 2003; Moreland race or hu man types. Thus, when the o ries of evo lu tion and Reynolds, 1999; Wolpoff and Caspari, 1997). are re duced to mere ra cial dif fer en ti a tion, ex ist ing un- Brem, Ranney and Schindel (2003) found that when ease be tween those teach ing sci en tific prin ci ples of hu- people accept evolutionary or creationist accounts of life man or i gin and those that feel threat ened by it be comes on Earth, they tend to have a negative perception of the ex ac er bated. By com par i son, the value of col lect ing per- 456 Journal of Geoscience Education, v. 53, n. 4, September, 2005, p. 456-461 sonal nar ra tives on a con tro ver sial topic such as evo lu - Extracting participant models of evolution, especially tion rests in how re search ers can pro vide par tic i pants human evolution, is challenging. In addition to the safety in tran scend ing the po ten tial dis com fort of re port - discomfort participants may experience by "going on the ing. The his tor i cal ev i dence that non-scientists tend to record" with personal beliefs about a controversial frame evo lu tion ary the ory in so cial and moral terms sug- subject even anonymously, accounts of actual gests ad her ing to such per cep tions in volves the use of evolutionary processes do require specific prior frag mented and sim plis tic in ter pre ta tions of mean ings in knowledge. Participants may become hesitant or change over time. For this rea son, tell ing an evo lu tion ary embarrassed if unfamiliar with the details of these story may pro vide re search par tic i pants a cre ative and processes, even if evolutionary theory by itself causes no non-judgmental op tion of re veal ing per sonal in ter pre ta - discomfort. tions of evo lu tionary change and time with out earthly One possible solution to this dilemma is to ask lim i ta tions. participants to construct an evolutionary narrative about Conceptually, understanding evolution through a fictional "humanoid" species. Genet (1998) developed a “deep time” (McPhee, 1981) is difficult because it is college course that explored the concept of "epic explained after the fact and is affected by complex, evolution," suggesting students would better stochastic events. The odds that things would turn out understand science as a story. His curriculum details similarly if we could re-run evolution of the universe or epic evolution as scientifically objective, culturally life on Earth are infinitesimally small (Dennett, 1995; relative, and as meeting the need for personal Gould, 1989). In a forward time scale, evolutionary understanding of a complex theory. This method also theory may appear to have very limited predictive appears to tie people to the future. Creativity research power for some people and it may create discomfort for shows that people tend not to move far from their actual humans to visualize prospective natural events in the experience and beliefs when creating "novel" characters, future. while prior knowledge and current beliefs constrain Alternatively, human dependence on cognitive innovation, especially when specific examples are memory for interpreting a time scale of events to provided (Costello and Keane, 2000; Ward and Sifonis, understand what the future may bring (Suddendorf and 1997, Smith et al., 1993). Our rationale for asking Corballis, 1997) could interfere with our capability to participants to invent a new humanoid species within a visualize vast time scales. An unwillingness of teachers storyline was to relieve hesitation in responses that may to engage meaningfully with evolution may derive from be due to internal conflict or lack of knowledge. the great difficulty of comprehending the geologic time Participants would not have to make claims about frame in which biological evolution takes place. human beings directly, yet we still expected them to Although the magnitude of deep time is readily apparent draw heavily on existing personal conceptions of human from observations
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