Teaching evolution: attitudes & strategies of educators in Utah – an update 20 years later

ABSTRACT

Previous research on evolution education in Utah college biology courses highlighted how frequently professors faced student challenges to evolution and examined the strategies they used to deal with those challenges. In the twenty years since that study, the population of Utah has become less religious and more diverse. Meanwhile, the US population has become more accepting of evolution. To investigate college biology evolution education in Utah’s current demographic and ideological climate, we repeated research completed in 2002. Statistical analysis of group differences between the 2002 sample (N = 78) and the 2022 sample (N = 135) suggests that current college biology instructors experience fewer challenges to evolution. Strategies for dealing with student challenges also shifted. The 2022 sample reported greater reliance on presenting religion and science as not mutually exclusive and highlighting evolution as science, while reporting reduced emphasis on presenting evolution and religion as distinct concepts. The recent sample had more than double the proportion of women as the previous sample, reflecting a nationwide trend of stronger representation by women in STEM fields. Our findings suggest that instructors who teach evolution should periodically examine their methods to ensure they are teaching in a way that connects with current students.

KEYWORDS:

• Evolution
• pedagogy
• religion
• teaching
• biology

Acknowledgments

Thank you to our participants for completing the survey and for reaching out to continue a discussion about teaching evolution in Utah. Additional thanks to the Center for Teaching Innovation at Southern Utah University for hosting a faculty writing retreat at which a portion of the original draft of this manuscript was written. Support for article preparation was provided by a Southern Utah University College of Humanities & Social Sciences Summer Research Grant. Thanks to Bryan Koenig for his feedback on a previous draft of this manuscript. Finally, the first author would like to thank her students (especially Kennley Cook, Tanner Dougherty, Audge Wells, and Rachel Koppes Wells) for helping a non-Utah native better understand Utah culture and religion.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Southern Utah University College of Humanities and Social Sciences.