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

当生物学本科生学习进化的核心概念时，我们如何知道他们是否接受了他们所教授的内容？虽然这是一个看似简单的问题，但对进化接受度的不同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，反过来又阻碍了在提高录取率方面取得进展。虽然这一主题在多个学科中进行了研究--例如，心理学、教育学、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，这些专家的专业知识与改进我们衡量进化论接受程度的方式有关，这将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个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，该项目将举办一系列虚拟和面对面的会议，来自不同学科的专家都对进化接受度有着共同的兴趣，但很少一起研究如何测量它。这些会议的目标是确定如何创建和维持一个网络，以改善我们目前的一套工具来测量进化接受度。通过这样做，该项目有可能广泛提高公众对进化论的接受率，这一接受率在过去30年中一直停滞不前。该项目由生物科学局、生物基础设施司和教育和人力资源局共同资助，本科教育部作为他们努力解决的一部分，在“本科生物学教育的愿景和变化：行动呼吁”所提出的挑战（http：//visionandchange/finalreport）。该奖项反映了NSF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.