http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3087-3833
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ABSTRACT
The goal of our study was to examine a large (>400), cross-sectional sample of Chinese pre-service biology teachers (PBTs) in order to document their evolution acceptance levels, evolution knowledge, and evolutionary reasoning patterns. This approach was taken in order to better understand the degree to which particular evolutionary reasoning difficulties exist independent of religious worldviews. The sample included (1) 160 PBTs tasked with completing four items from the ACORNS instrument, (2) 320 PBTs who completed the CINS and MATE instruments, and (3) 32 teachers who completed semi-structured clinical interviews using four ACORNS items. Findings from these samples revealed that Chinese PBTs’ knowledge (CINS) and acceptance (MATE) were equivalent with teachers’ scores from other countries, whereas performance on explanation tasks was lower. Scores from the CINS, MATE, and ACORNS did not reveal any significant improvements through the four-year teacher education programme. Although a large body of work has shown the important roles that religious affiliation and religiosity can play in evolutionary understanding and acceptance, our findings demonstrate that many evolutionary reasoning difficulties extend beyond religious factors, and add to a growing body of work showing that religiosity does not adequately account for PBTs’ moderate evolution acceptance.
Acknowledgments
We wish to express sincere thanks to the two anonymous reviewers who took the time to help us improve our work and provide many helpful suggestions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
ORCID
Minsu Ha http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3087-3833
Jian Wang http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6749-2068
Ross H. Nehm http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5029-740X