Do State Science Standards Matter? Comparing Student Perceptions of the Coverage of Evolution in Indiana & Ohio Public High Schools

摘要

The questions that followed asked about: * the time spent on evolution and, for comparison, the time spent on cell structure and function, and genetics, fundamental topics expected to receive significant coverage in a first high school biology course * the age of the teacher to see if teacher turnover may influence the coverage of evolution * which explanation for the diversity of life their teacher emphasized * how the students think the scientific community regards evolutionary theory * the student's personal preference for an explanation for the diversity of life. All questions specifically referred to the students' first high school biology course; however, additional biology courses in high school (especially those with potentially more evolution content such as zoology or comparative anatomy) may have confounded the results by blurring the students' memory of content in their first biology course.n This underscores the importance of teachers in molding their students' worldviews, and given the fundamental importance of evolution in biology, magnifies the disservice that teachers are doing to their students by ignoring or underemphasizing evolutionary explanations in their classes.