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WHDL - 00011787

Creationist-Believing Students’ Scientific Knowledge and Reasoning about Evolution

Richard Truman Peterson

Resource Types

Academic (Thesis, Dissertation, Etc.)

Resource Languages

English

Institutional Repository

Description / Abstract

The purpose of this study arose from a pilot-study problem observed of acceptance of microevolution among those who identified as holding a creationist worldview or as having misgivings about the theory of evolution, which can be classified as a level of evolution acceptance, while these individuals still maintained a complete rejection of macroevolution, particularly when it came to primate/ human evolution. This study made use of the framework of Borderging et al. (2016), and targeted this demographic at a small-private Christian university to assess this demographic’s relationships with, 1. the nature of science, 2. to determine how an epistemology of appealing to authority could correlate to the acceptance of macroevolution, and 3. to determine if religiosity has a correlative relationship with evolution acceptance. This study used a mixed-methods approach of both quantitative and qualitative assessments to answer these questions and attempted to address some of the limitations in the study of Borderging et al. (2016). My study found that these students had strong understandings of the nature of science, were not trusting of scientists, demonstrated a strong linear relationship and statistical significance between appealing to authority and rejection of macroevolution, and had no linear relationship between religiosity and their respective level of evolution acceptance. This is important for science education research as it demonstrates that religiosity may not play a role in a student’s level of evolution acceptance, and that the potential epistemology to target for further research in evolution acceptance is the role of authority how it affect student’s in choosing what to understand and accept.

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Subject Index

Keywordsmicroevolution, creationist, macroevolution,epistemology, primate human evolution, religiosity

Degree AwardedMaster of Science in Biology

Awarding InstitutionPoint Loma Nazarene University

Committee MembersDianne Anderson, Robert Thompson

Supervisor or ChairApril Maskiewicz Cordero

Peer Reviewed?No

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Theses in Biology

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Life Sciences

English

This collection consists of theses for the Master of Science in General Biology at Point Loma Nazarene University. These items were provided to the library by their authors with the permission required to make them freely available for access. These works remain the intellectual property of their authors.