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Fig. 11 | Evolution: Education and Outreach

Fig. 11

From: Educators of Prospective Teachers Hesitate to Embrace Evolution Due to Deficient Understanding of Science/Evolution and High Religiosity

Fig. 11

Understanding of science, evolution, and religiosity indexes of New England general faculty (Gen Fac, white circles, left), educators of prospective teachers (Edu, black circles, center), and college students (Stu, white circles, right). Each index ranges from 0 to 3 (lower to higher levels of understanding of science and evolution, or least to most religious position) as follows: a for the understanding-of-science index, responders received +1 if they rejected the idea that scientific theories are based on opinions by scientists, +1 if they disagreed with the notion that scientific arguments are as valid and respectable as their nonscientific counterparts, and +1 if they rejected the statement that crime-scene and accident-scene investigators use a different type of scientific method to investigate a crime or an accident; Kruskal–Wallis one-way ANOVA on ranks, H = 89.365, df = 2, P ≤ 0.001. b The evolution index, responders received +1 if they rejected the idea that organisms acquire beneficial traits during their lifetimes and then pass on these traits to their descendants, +1 if they disagreed with the notion that during evolution monkeys such as chimpanzees can turn into humans, and +1 if they rejected the statement that the origin of the human mind and consciousness cannot be explained by evolution; Kruskal-Wallis one-way ANOVA on ranks, H = 171.683, df = 2, P ≤ 0.001. c The religiosity index, responders received +1 if they agreed with the idea that faith in God is necessary for morality, +1 if they accepted the statement that religion is very important in their lives, and +1 if they said they pray daily; Kruskal–Wallis one-way ANOVA on ranks, H = 21.734, df = 2, P ≤ 0.001. Lowercase letters indicate Dunn-test two-tail pair-wise comparisons within groups P ≤ 0.05. Gen Fac, n = 222; Edu, n = 53; and Stu, n = 576. Error bars are standard errors

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