Relationships and connections between religious beliefs and the teaching of evolution based on the perceptions of high school biology teachers in Christian schools

This mixed method study explored the beliefs of teachers in religious schools regarding evolution, their attitudes toward evolution, and their teaching of evolutionary content along with Christian high school biology teachers' perceptions regarding how their religious beliefs affected their teaching of evolution. The quantitative portion of the study was conducted among 52 high school biology teachers teaching in Association for Christian Schools International (ACSI) accredited schools in the California and Hawaii regions using a 57-item questionnaire adapted from Smith (2010). It was guided by the following research question: What are the relationships between the religious beliefs of Christian high school biology teachers regarding evolution, their attitude toward teaching evolution, and their self-reported practices in teaching evolution? The AMOS path analysis data revealed that teacher beliefs have a significant effect on attitude, and attitude has a significant effect on the practice of teaching of evolution. After running the tests of the path model via AMOS, however, numerical results indicated that belief did not have significant effect on these teachers' actual instructional practices. These results suggested that belief bore no significant impact on the actual teaching practices of evolution; rather, attitude bore a significant effect on their pedagogy. The effect of beliefs on actual teaching practices was only minimal because it was indirectly influenced by belief and the effect size was small. The qualitative phase consisted of interviews with 11 biology teachers in ACSI-accredited Christian schools. The interviews consisted of 26 open-ended questions eliciting teachers' perceptions regarding how their religious beliefs affected their teaching of evolution. The results showed that teachers' beliefs regarding evolution and their Christian faith were mixed and complex. Teachers perceived that their religious beliefs affected their teaching of evolution in a variety of ways. Teachers were generally supportive of teaching evolution and believed their evolution instruction successfully incorporated their own knowledge and students' backgrounds.