This paper aims at assessing the evolutionist and creationist conceptions of Brazilian teachers. The work is developed within the framework of the European project BIOHEAD-CITIZEN （biology, health and environmental e...This paper aims at assessing the evolutionist and creationist conceptions of Brazilian teachers. The work is developed within the framework of the European project BIOHEAD-CITIZEN （biology, health and environmental education for better citizenship）, which takes into account that scientific knowledge and teachers＇ attitudes and values can influence the teaching practices. The large questionnaire BIOHEAD-CITIZEN, which was constructed to be applied in 19 countries in Europe, Africa and Middle East countries, was applied, in this study, to six groups of Brazilian teachers： primary school teachers, biology teachers and Portuguese language teachers and corresponding teachers-to-be. For this paper the answers to questions about evolution were used as dependent variables. Descriptive and multivariate analyses were carried out. Biology teachers and biology teachers-to-be gave more importance to the natural selection and the evolution process than the other groups of teachers. Comparing to the BIOHEAD-CITIZEN countries, the total Brazilian sample showed a higher percentage of creationist conceptions, particularly the Brazilian biology teachers and teachers-to-be. As discussed herein, this may not be an obstacle for teaching evolution as they accept both creationist and evolutionist concomitantly.展开更多
文摘This paper aims at assessing the evolutionist and creationist conceptions of Brazilian teachers. The work is developed within the framework of the European project BIOHEAD-CITIZEN （biology, health and environmental education for better citizenship）, which takes into account that scientific knowledge and teachers＇ attitudes and values can influence the teaching practices. The large questionnaire BIOHEAD-CITIZEN, which was constructed to be applied in 19 countries in Europe, Africa and Middle East countries, was applied, in this study, to six groups of Brazilian teachers： primary school teachers, biology teachers and Portuguese language teachers and corresponding teachers-to-be. For this paper the answers to questions about evolution were used as dependent variables. Descriptive and multivariate analyses were carried out. Biology teachers and biology teachers-to-be gave more importance to the natural selection and the evolution process than the other groups of teachers. Comparing to the BIOHEAD-CITIZEN countries, the total Brazilian sample showed a higher percentage of creationist conceptions, particularly the Brazilian biology teachers and teachers-to-be. As discussed herein, this may not be an obstacle for teaching evolution as they accept both creationist and evolutionist concomitantly.
