How to Teach the Teachers?

Many studies, including one of ours that was recently published, have found that even advanced biology students commonly misunderstand evolutionary processes. It is clear that the current approach to teaching biology at the undergraduate level is not serving students as well as one would hope. Given that today's students become tomorrow's teachers, our failures can quickly become compounded. A student who misunderstands evolution will often become a teacher who teaches misconceptions to new students. A recent study by Nehm, Kim, and Shephard (Science Education 2009) examines the potential impact of evolutionary biology training and personal beliefs on K-12 biology education. Pre-certification science teachers in New York City were asked to answer questions about their belief/acceptance of evolutionary theory and fact, knowledge of natural selection and other evolutionary processes, religiosity, sense of conflict between their beliefs and requirements of teaching, and support of teaching creationism in the classroom. The authors hypothesized the following: 1) Biology teachers have greater knowledge and fewer misconceptions about evolution than non-biology teachers. (2) Biology teachers have higher acceptance of evolution and lower preference that students be taught creationism in school than non-biology teachers. (3) Evolutionary knowledge is positively correlated with acceptance of evolution. Surprisingly (and disappointingly), they found only partial support for the first hypothesis, and had to reject the second hypothesis. Although biology teachers had significantly higher levels of knowledge about evolution (measured by the use of concepts in open response questions), they harbored identical levels of misconceptions as non-biology science teachers. Even more striking is that biology teachers in this study had similar levels of rejection of evolutionary theory and support for teaching creationism in schools, even after taking a course in evolution. Were these levels low, this pattern might not be worrisome. However, nearly half of the science teachers who participated in the study advocated teaching some form of creationism to biology students. The authors found weak support for the third hypothesis in this study. Evolutionary biology knowledge had a significant, but weak, association with belief that creationism should be taught in schools. However, training in evolutionary theory had no relationship with acceptance or a belief that creationism should be taught. My first thought after reading this story was of a pair of statements included in a recent presentation by Jon Herron. In this presentation, Jon admitted that he tells his classes (in reference to evolutionary theory) that, “It’s okay with me if you don’t accept it, as long as you understand it” while he really means, “It’s okay with me if you don’t understand it, as long as you accept it”. I have always agreed with the first statement, and I suspect many instructors do as well. My assumption was that once students understood the nature of science and evolutionary biology, they would tend to accept evolutionary theory and reject non-evidence based explanations. Unfortunately, most work shows that acceptance and knowledge of evolutionary theory are not correlated (Eli Meir discusses this further in another posting). At the same time, day-to-day decisions may be more heavily influenced by belief and intuition than by knowledge. If these findings continue to be supported, it raises the question: would K-12 biology education in the country benefit from an increased focus on undergraduate students’ acceptance of evolutionary theory? It is difficult to imagine a suitable approach to achieve this, but current training approaches are yielding unacceptable results. Imagine the uproar if half of high school geology teachers supported teaching hollow-earth theory alongside plate tectonics (teach the controversy!); such is the state of K-12 biology education in this country. However we approach it, we must do a better job of teaching the teachers.