Acceptance / rejection of biological evolution: attitudes of students of basic education. / Aceitação/rejeição da evolução biológica: atitudes de alunos da educação básica

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2009

RESUMO

The evolutionary theory provides an understanding of the main characteristics of life and the relationship of the organisms with their environment. Although a unifying role is attributed to biological evolution in the Biological Sciences, in general, students reject it or present difficulties in understanding its basic concepts. The controversy which surrounds the subject extrapolates the science classroom and acquires a more conflicting dimension in the United States, where creationist groups aim at disqualifying evolutionary theory as a proven scientific knowledge. Although there are no strong creationist traditions in Brazil, this movement has been gaining more and more space, especially in the academic environment. Interest to carry out this research was developed when the controversies which involve the emotional and cultural constructions in teaching and learning the evolutionary theory, the multiculturalism that characterizes Brazil and some opinion polls results which indicate that Brazilians agree with some items of the creationist were considered. The research aims at verifying the acceptance or rejection of the evolutionary theory by students who have just finished the eighth grade of primary school at the public schools in Tangará da Serra MT and São Caetano do Sul SP; and at characterizing possible relations among the informants attitude towards the evolutionary theory and the closeness between science and religion. The research consisted of two steps: the first step was a bibliographical survey of the Brazilian researches on biological evolution and the presence of the creationist movement within the school context. This step resulted in a general consensus which indicated that there are very few Brazilian researches on this subject. In the second step, an empirical research was done since no studies on the attitude of basic education students towards evolution were found, but the interest in the theme of the study was reinforced. Questionnaires were elaborated and applied, together with the ROSE questionnaire, to 294 students in Tangará da Serra MT and 358 students in São Caetano do Sul SP. The data analysis was carried out with the help of the Software Statistical Package for Social Science version 15.0. The results show that the students accept the topics of evolutionary theory, regarding fossils as evidence of the existence of species which lived in the past, a common ancestry and natural selection. On the other hand, when the points are about origin and evolution of the earth and the human being, the students attitude is to disagree with this topic. The acceptance levels seem to be influenced mainly by religion: the evangelical students had lower levels of agreement with the evolutionary theory. The possible relation between the rejection of some topics and religion represents the possibility that existence of different forms of knowledge to explain the human existence demands that one makes distinctions between science and the other forms. Discussions about the nature of science may contribute to settle some cultural conflicts of students who understand evolution as something that is opposed to their personal convictions.

ASSUNTO(S)

acceptance/rejection aceitação/rejeição estado da arte evolução biológica ensino fundamental biological evolution state of the art basic education

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