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Establishing Religious Cultural Competence in Evolution Education (Reccee)

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Establishing Religious Cultural Competence in Evolution Education (Reccee) View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ASU Digital Repository From Conflict to Common Ground: Establishing Religious Cultural Competence in Evolution Education (ReCCEE) by Maryann Elizabeth Barnes A Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Approved April 2018 by the Graduate Supervisory Committee: Sara Brownell, Chair Jane Maienschein Jenefer Husman Randolph Nesse James Collins ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY May 2018 ABSTRACT Evolution is the foundation of biology, yet it remains controversial even among college biology students. Acceptance of evolution is important for students if we want them to incorporate evolution into their scientific thinking. However, students’ religious beliefs are a consistent barrier to their acceptance of evolution due to a perceived conflict between religion and evolution. Using pre-post instructional surveys of students in introductory college biology, Study 1 establishes instructional strategies that can be effective for reducing students' perceived conflict between religion and evolution. Through interviews and qualitative analyses, Study 2 documents how instructors teaching evolution at public universities may be resistant towards implementing strategies that can reduce students' perceived conflict, perhaps because of their own lack of religious beliefs and lack of training and awareness about students' conflict with evolution. Interviews with religious students in Study 3 reveals that religious college biology students can perceive their instructors as unfriendly towards religion which can negatively impact these students' perceived conflict between religion and evolution. Study 4 explores how instructors at Christian universities, who share the same Christian backgrounds as their students, do not struggle with implementing strategies that reduce students' perceived conflict between religion and evolution. Cumulatively, these studies reveal a need for a new instructional framework for evolution education that takes into account the religious cultural difference between instructors who are teaching evolution and students who are learning evolution. As such, a new instructional framework is then described, Religious Cultural Competence in Evolution Education (ReCCEE), that can help instructors teach evolution in a way that can reduce students' perceived conflict between religion and i evolution, increase student acceptance of evolution, and create more inclusive college biology classrooms for religious students. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER Page 1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ 1 2 IMPACT OF A SHORT EVOLUTION MODULE ON STUDENTS' PERCEIVED CONFLICT BETWEEN RELIGION AND EVOLUTION .......... 8 3 PRACTICES AND PERSPECTIVES OF COLLEGE INSTRUCTORS ON ADDRESSING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS WHEN TEACHING EVOLUTION 30 4 EXPERIENCES OF JUDEO-CHRISTIAN STUDENTS IN UNDERGRADUATE BIOLOGY ...................................................................... 80 5 EXPERIENCES AND PRACTICES OF EVOLUTION INSTRUCTORS AT CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITIES THAT CAN INFORM CULTURALLY COMPETENT EVOLUTION EDUCATION .................................................. 128 6 INTRODUCING RELIGIOUS CULTURAL COMPETENCE IN EVOLUTION EDUCATION (RECCEE) ........................................................ 179 7 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS .............................................. 212 REFERENCES .................................................................................................................... 219 APPENDIX A PERMISSION TO USE PUBLISHED WORKS ................................................ 237 iii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Evolution is important to biology, yet controversial in society. Evolution is widely cited as the overarching theoretical framework of the entire discipline of the biological sciences. Yet, public polls over the last thirty years show that around half of the public rejects evolution, particularly the evolution of humans and the common ancestry of life on Earth (Gallup, 2014). Further, this rejection of evolution is not limited to the lay public, even in college biology courses for majors, students who reject evolution can comprise a significant proportion of the classroom (Ingram & Nelson, 2006). While a significant proportion of college biology students can reject evolution, acceptance of evolution is an important educational outcome for these students. Studies show that a student can learn the facts and processes of evolution and still choose not to accept evolution as fact (Hermann, 2012). However, if a student understands but does not accept evolution, then they are unlikely to use this knowledge in their scientific thinking (Sinatra, 2013). Further, students who do not accept evolution will be unlikely to engage with evolution beyond the necessities of their courses, which will further limit their understanding of evolution overtime. If understanding evolution does not necessarily lead to acceptance of evolution, then how can biology instructors foster acceptance of evolution among their students? Studies consistently show that students’ religiosity, or the extent to which they are committed to religious beliefs, are often the most predictive factor for whether a student will choose to accept evolution (Barnes, Evans, Hazel, Brownell, & Nesse, 2017; Dunk, Petto, Wiles, & Campbell, 2017; Glaze, Goldston, & Dantzler, 2014; Ha, Haury, & 1 Nehm, 2012; Rissler, Duncan, & Caruso, 2014). This is likely the result of complex historical and cultural narratives that have conceptualized evolution as necessarily in conflict with religious beliefs, particularly in the United States (Numbers, 2006). However, students may be able to conceptualize evolution and their religious beliefs as compatible, and this can help increase their acceptance of evolution (Gould, 1999; Settlage & Southerland, 2007; Southerland & Scharmann, 2013). Since religiosity is the main factor in predicting whether a student will accept evolution and changing students’ religious beliefs is unlikely and may be perceived as unethical by some instructors, many researchers have hypothesized that decreasing perceived conflict between religious beliefs and evolution may be the best way to increase student acceptance of evolution. Some researchers hypothesize that it is a person’s perception that their specific religious beliefs conflict with evolution that is the main barrier to accepting evolution, and not religiosity itself (Kahan & Stanovich, 2016; Wiles & Alters, 2011). In fact, it is likely that this is the very reason we see high rates of rejection of evolution in some religious denominations but not others; if individuals within a religious denomination perceive a greater conflict between evolution and their religious beliefs, then their acceptance of evolution will be lower. If students conceptualize their religious beliefs in a way that does not necessarily conflict with evolution, it increases the probability of them accepting evolution. For instance, if a student concludes that evolution does not preclude the existence of a God/god(s), this may help these students become more accepting of evolution. Indeed, preliminary unpublished data from an upper level evolution course (n=319) at a secular university and an upper level genetics course at a Christian university (n=33) indicate that if students 2 perceive conflict between religion and evolution, then they are more likely to have lower levels of acceptance of evolution (r=. -45 and -.57 respectively, p<.001). Therefore, instructors may be able to increase students’ acceptance of evolution by helping to decrease perceived conflict between religion and evolution among their students. Chapter 2 of this dissertation describes a study that was published in The American Biology Teacher that explores whether instructors may be able to help students reduce perceived conflict between religion and evolution (Barnes, Elser, & Brownell, 2017). In this study three instructional practices were explored that may reduce perceived conflict between religion and evolution among students. These practices included providing students with examples of scientists who are both religious and accept evolution, increasing student awareness of the variety of viewpoints on the relationship between religion and evolution, and teaching students the bounded nature of science. Using pre-post instructional surveys from students, we found that these instructional strategies were able to reduce the number of students who perceived a conflict between religion and evolution by fifty percent. However, the question remained whether instructors who were teaching evolution used these practices. Chapter 3 describes a study that was published in CBE Life Sciences Education to answer the question of whether evolution instructors at public colleges were using practices to reduce student perceived conflict with evolution (Barnes & Brownell, 2016). Interviews with these instructors revealed that they struggled to implement practices shown to reduce students’ conflict between religion and evolution. First, instructors often did not see increasing student acceptance of evolution as a goal when teaching, which made reducing perceived conflict between religion and evolution an unlikely goal as 3 well. Further, instructors cited their own lack of religious beliefs and lack of training in addressing issues related to religion and evolution as reasons
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