RCN-UBE Incubator: Bringing Together Diverse Expertise to Understand How to Best Measure Student Acceptance of Evolution

Arizona State University, Scottsdale AZ

Investigators

Abstract

When undergraduate biology students learn about the core concept of evolution, how do we know whether they have accepted what they have been taught? While a seemingly simple question, different definitions of evolution acceptance and different instruments that measure it have made answering this question difficult. This has resulted in contradictions in the literature, which, in turn, has hindered progress in increasing acceptance rates. While this topic is studied in multiple disciplines--e.g., psychology, education, and biology--researchers in these fields rarely interact with one another. This project aims to establish a new network of experts with expertise relevant to improving the way we measure acceptance of evolution that will tackle this challenging problem. The lack of progress in helping students recognize evolution as a credible scientific theory has been cited as one of the biggest failures of science education in the modern era. To help address this issue, this project will host a series of virtual and in-person meetings of experts from different disciplines who all have a shared interest in evolution acceptance, yet rarely work together on how to measure it. The goal of these meetings will be to identify how to create and sustain a network to improve our current suite of instruments to measure evolution acceptance. By doing so, the project has the potential to broadly increase evolution acceptance rates in the general public that have been stagnant over the past thirty years. This project is being jointly funded by the Directorate for Biological Sciences, Division of Biological Infrastructure, and the Directorate for Education and Human Resources, Division of Undergraduate Education as part of their efforts to address the challenges posed in "Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action" (http://visionandchange/finalreport). This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.