RCN-UBE Incubator: Bringing Together Diverse Expertise to Understand How to Best Measure Student Acceptance of Evolution

当生物学本科学生学习进化的核心概念时，我们如何知道他们是否接受了所教的内容？虽然这是一个看似简单的问题，但不同的进化接受定义和不同的测量工具使得回答这个问题变得困难。这导致了文献中的矛盾，这反过来又阻碍了提高接受率的进展。虽然这个话题在多个学科中都有研究，例如：心理学、教育学和生物学——这些领域的研究人员很少相互交流。该项目旨在建立一个新的专家网络，这些专家具有相关的专业知识，以改进我们衡量进化接受度的方式，从而解决这一具有挑战性的问题。在帮助学生认识到进化论是一种可信的科学理论方面缺乏进展，这被认为是现代科学教育的最大失败之一。为了帮助解决这个问题，这个项目将举办一系列的虚拟和面对面的会议，来自不同学科的专家都对进化的接受感兴趣，但很少在如何衡量它的问题上合作。这些会议的目标将是确定如何创建和维持一个网络，以改进我们当前的工具套件，以衡量进化的接受程度。通过这样做，该项目有可能在过去三十年中停滞不前的公众中广泛提高进化的接受率。该项目由生物基础设施司生物科学司和教育和人力资源司本科教育司共同资助，作为其应对“本科生物学教育的愿景与变革：行动呼吁”（http://visionandchange/finalreport）所提出的挑战的努力的一部分。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

When undergraduate biology students learn about the core concept of evolution, how do we know whether they have accepted what they have been taught? While a seemingly simple question, different definitions of evolution acceptance and different instruments that measure it have made answering this question difficult. This has resulted in contradictions in the literature, which, in turn, has hindered progress in increasing acceptance rates. While this topic is studied in multiple disciplines--e.g., psychology, education, and biology--researchers in these fields rarely interact with one another. This project aims to establish a new network of experts with expertise relevant to improving the way we measure acceptance of evolution that will tackle this challenging problem.The lack of progress in helping students recognize evolution as a credible scientific theory has been cited as one of the biggest failures of science education in the modern era. To help address this issue, this project will host a series of virtual and in-person meetings of experts from different disciplines who all have a shared interest in evolution acceptance, yet rarely work together on how to measure it. The goal of these meetings will be to identify how to create and sustain a network to improve our current suite of instruments to measure evolution acceptance. By doing so, the project has the potential to broadly increase evolution acceptance rates in the general public that have been stagnant over the past thirty years.This project is being jointly funded by the Directorate for Biological Sciences, Division of Biological Infrastructure, and the Directorate for Education and Human Resources, Division of Undergraduate Education as part of their efforts to address the challenges posed in "Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action" (http://visionandchange/finalreport).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.