The Importance of Understanding the Nature of Science for Accepting Evolution

By Tania Lombrozo, Anastasia Thanukos, Michael Weisberg. Evolution: Education and Outreach, 2008

228 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Many students reject evolutionary theory, whether or not they adequately understand basic evolutionary concepts. We explore the hypothesis that accepting evolution is related to understanding the nature of science. In particular, students may be more likely to accept evolution if they understand that a scientific theory is provisional but reliable, that scientists employ diverse methods for testing scientific claims, and that relating data to theory can require inference and interpretation. In a study with university undergraduates, we find that accepting evolution is significantly correlated with understanding the nature of science, even when controlling for the effects of general interest in science and past science education. These results highlight the importance of understanding the nature of science for accepting evolution. We conclude with a discussion of key characteristics of science that challenge a simple portrayal of the scientific method and that we believe should be emphasized in classrooms.

Subfields: Education, History and Philosophy of Science, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/98038b6ab12b7bef151a2a2278d9ae1934aeb10e

How researchers see this paper

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In Education

1. Knut Neumann
2. I. Neumann
3. Ross H. Nehm
4. S. Kim

In History and Philosophy of Science

1. I. Neumann
2. Knut Neumann
3. Ross H. Nehm
4. S. Kim
5. Minsu Ha

In Social Psychology

1. I. Neumann
2. Knut Neumann
3. Ross H. Nehm
4. S. Kim
5. Minsu Ha

Citations in the corpus

• Three Decades of Anti-evolution Campaign and its Results: Turkish Undergraduates’ Acceptance and Understanding of the Biological Evolution Theory (2010, background): “Some research has shown that understanding and acceptance are related to each other, that is the better the understanding of nature of science and evolutionary theory a teacher has, the more likely he or she will accept the theory of evolution (Deniz et al. 2008; Lombrozo et al. 2008; Rutledge and”
• Evaluating Instrument Quality in Science Education: Rasch‐based analyses of a Nature of Science test (2011, methodology): “Methodological Issues with Likert-Type Instruments Our Rasch-based analyses of the original and the reduced item sets from the Lombrozo et al. (2008) instrument provide important lessons about Likert-scale items for science educators developing or evaluating other instruments of this type.”
• A Cross‐Cultural Comparison of Korean and American Science Teachers’ Views of Evolution and the Nature of Science (2011, background): “How this realistically can be achieved is a difficult issue, but recent work employing NOS readings, reflections, and activities (Clough, 2006; Lombrozo et al., 2008; Scharmann, 2005) has been found to diminish personal conflict about religion and science (Nehm & Schonfeld, 2007).”