Doctoral Dissertation Research: Science Education and the Limits of Institutional Agency

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Doctoral student Michael Kohut (Vanderbilt University), supervised by Dr. Norbert O. Ross, will undertake research on science education. The focus of the research will be on the relationship between new evolution curricula and the social, religious, and cultural contexts in which those curricula are being enacted. Research will take place at multiple field sites, comprising communities in middle and eastern Tennessee, as well as teaching colleges and state government offices. Data will be gathered to document 1) stakeholder beliefs, as those beliefs relate to evolutionary theory; 2) stakeholder conceptions of education, science, and evolution teaching; 3) interpretations of evolutionary theory; and 4) the relationships between these beliefs, attitudes and interpretations and the teaching of evolution. The researcher will use a combination of cognitive and anthropological methods, including structured and semi-structured interviews, informal conversation, ethnographic observation, card sorting tasks, and cultural consensus analyses. The research is important because it will help social scientists understand the cultural and social grounding of beliefs about educational policy and practice, considered through the relationships among schools, colleges, and state government, as well as churches, communities, teachers unions, and business leaders. For policy makers, the research will help to elucidate the disjunctures between cultural understandings of the scientific status of theories and science standards policies. Funding this research also supports the education of a graduate student.