CSI in the News October 2011 - CSI Today

spent each year covering “evolutionary processes,” “human evolution,” and “creationism or intelligentdesign.” They also asked several questions designed to probe how close teachers’ beliefs and practiceswere to the scientific consensus’s gold standard, as defined by the National Research Council’s NSESdocument – questions about whether teachers believed that evolution has the status of scientific fact,believed that one cannot understand biology and several related fields without understandingevolution, and believed that evolution is properly regarded as a unifying theme in science. They foundsignificant variation in time spent on evolution and in teaching content and methods, especially when itcomes to “human evolution.” Seventeen percent of their respondents did not cover human evolution atall, while another 35% spent only 1‐2 hours on it (p.123). When they combined “evolutionary processes”with “human evolution,” Berkman and Plutzer found that the average teacher spent a total of 14 hourson it, and only 1% of the respondents excluded it entirely. When it comes to how close the content ofteaching evolution comes to the scientific consensus, Berkman and Plutzer report that teachers are“divided roughly 50‐50 between those who embrace the national organization’s recommendedpedagogical approach and those who do not.” However, only 12% “are teaching evolution in a manner[*588] totally consistent with the recommendations of the most prominent national scientificorganizations” (p.127).Many teachers sought to undermine evolution, or to avoid controversy, by confining instruction to“microevolution” (within species changes), by leaving evolution to the end of the course so as to give itshort shrift, or by explicitly stating that students need not believe in evolution in order to learn about itas a theory (the authors wonder what would happen if a science teacher told students that he or she didnot care whether students actually believed that light simultaneously has the properties of waves anddiscrete particles) (p.133). Seventy‐five percent of the respondents reported spending no time at all oncreationism or ID, but 22% reported spending at least some time on them. Berkman and Plutzerestimate that between 14‐21% of all teachers are endorsing creationism or ID in some fashion, mainlyby presenting it along with evolution as if the two views were akin to competing ideas or theories. Eitherboth are “scientific models,” or both are “religion,” but either way evolution is undermined.Why is it that some teachers spend over 20 hours on evolution and adhere to the scientific consensus onhow to teach it, while others barely mention it? How much of the variation might be explained bydifferent state standards and accountability mechanisms? How much by teachers’ educationalbackgrounds, training, and professional identities? How much by their personal beliefs? What is the roleof local community opinion, or pressure?Berkman and Plutzer place their discussion of teachers’ beliefs and practices in the broader context ofwork on street‐level bureaucracy (Lipsky, 1980). In Chapter 6, they ask whether differences in statestandards (viewed now in 2007 based on their own analysis) explain differences in teaching practices.They find that, for the most part, they do not (p.174). By contrast, teachers’ self‐rated expertisecorrelates well with time spent on evolution and the rigor of instruction (p.171). In Chapter 7, theauthors turn to how “the personal becomes pedagogical.” They test various models designed to explorethe role of two central personal characteristics: educational background and personal beliefs. They findthat the educational backgrounds of high school biology teachers varies a lot – only 51% have earned abachelor’s degree in science – and it seems to explain a lot of the variance. One interesting finding isthat a teacher’s having taken a full college course in evolutionary biology appears to have the largestimpact, compared to other measures of educational background and training. This finding and others inthis chapter direct our attention to teacher training and certification (p.182). It is possible that changesin training and certification could improve instruction (my thought was that stronger requirementscouldn’t hurt), but it is also possible that core religious beliefs and self‐selection come before and trumpPage 37 of 154