Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Konnemann, Christiane
• Asshoff, Roman
• Hammann, Marcus

Titel

Insights Into the Diversity of Attitudes Concerning Evolution and Creation: A Multidimensional Approach

Ist Teil von

• Science education (Salem, Mass.), 2016-07, Vol.100 (4), p.673-705

Ort / Verlag

New York: Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Erscheinungsjahr

2016

Quelle

Wiley Online Library Journals Frontfile Complete

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The main aim of this paper is to describe high school students' attitudes concerning evolution and creation, with a focus on (1) attitudes toward evolutionary theory, (2) attitudes toward the Biblical accounts of creation, (3) creationist beliefs, and (4) scientistic beliefs. Latent class analyses revealed seven attitude profiles in a sample of 1672 German high school students. In contrast with the prevailing focus on creationism in science education research, a scientistic attitude profile (22%) rather than a creationist attitude profile (4%) characterized the largest group in this sample. The remaining five profiles account for three-fourths of the sample and describe a range of different positions, that is, noncreationist and nonscientistic positions. Moreover, the groups of students who belonged to different attitude profiles differed significantly in terms of further variables: (a) perception of conflict between science and theology, (b) attitudes toward science, (c) attitudes toward religion, (d) understanding of the nature of science, and (e) understanding of the nature of Christian theology. The benefit of the presented approach is discussed in the context of previous studies that focused on the acceptance of evolutionary theory. Because we found evidence for a wide variety of attitudes, implications for teaching and learning evolution are discussed.