WHY DON’T WE TEACH EVOLUTION IN GEOLOGY CLASS?: COMPARING THE EVOLUTION UNDERSTANDING OF BIOLOGY MAJORS TO GEOLOGY MAJORS AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC

The Theory of Biological Evolution is most often taught to students in biology courses. However, many evolutionary concepts, specifically macroevolution, may be equally appropriate when teaching a geology course. Before determining how to teach these concepts, educators should understand the current baseline evolution understanding of students entering geology and biology as an area of study. Here, I compare the evolution understanding of 44 biology majors, 17 geology majors, and 98 members of the general public in order to assess that knowledge baseline.

Surveys were given to students at a medium-sized public liberal arts university in the South that were enrolled in a 200-level biology or 100-level geology course. An additional 98 participants from the U.S. general public completed the survey using Amazon Mechanical Turk (Turk). The survey given to the biology students and the Turk participants consisted of 10 valid multiple-choice items, a six-item religiosity scale, and demographic questions. The students in the geology class completed a six-item subset of the multiple-choice items and demographic questions.

Of the six items given to all three populations, the mean numbers correct were 2.9, 3.8, and 3.7 for biology, geology, and Turk populations, respectively, with geology and Turk populations scoring significantly higher than the biology students (p = 0.02 and p < 0.001, respectively). A key item that geology and Turk populations answered correctly more often was “Approximately how long did it take for soft-bodied animals to evolve the first hard, skeletal parts?” Response options were “days”, “years”, “hundreds of years”, “thousands of years”, and “millions of years”. Of the biology students, 42% selected “millions of years” correctly, and 81% and 72% of the Turk and geology, respectively, answered correctly. Conversely, on the four items that only biology students and Turk participants completed, biology students scored significantly higher (2.8 vs. 1.9; p < 0.001). There was a negative correlation between the number correct and religiosity among the biology students (p = 0.007), but not among Turk participants (p = 0.25). Thus, teaching evolution in a biology class has no advantage over a geology class. If fact, geology students may be better suited for understanding macroevolutionary concepts.