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SUMMARY:Evolution acceptance and high school students.  Methodological con
 siderations and new perspectives of investigation
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20230130T084500Z
DTEND;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20230130T093000Z
DTSTAMP;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20261017T061018Z
UID:indico-contribution-159-660@cern.ch
DESCRIPTION:Speakers: Giuseppe Pellegrini (Observa Science in Society)\nTh
 e idea of biological evolution is not accepted by many people around the w
 orld\, with a large disparity amongst countries. Some factors may act as o
 bstacles to the acceptance of evolution\, such as religion\, a lack of ope
 nness to experience\, and not understanding the nature of science. Althoug
 h the strength of the association between evolution acceptance and non-sci
 entific factors varies among studies\, it is often assumed that resistance
  to evolution is the by-product of a religious background. Some studies ar
 e even more specific and try to associate the acceptance of evolution with
  precise religious affiliations. \nIn my speech I will propose an introduc
 tion of the main tests used internationally to measure evolution acceptanc
 e and some statistical tools that allow our research team to verify the re
 levance of sociocultural factors in predicting such acceptance. \nStarting
  from an in-depth reflection on the factors that influence the knowledge a
 nd acceptance of evolutionary theories\, the Italian-Brazilian research gr
 oup formulated a research question to address this complex picture conside
 ring the same religious affiliation in two different countries with deep s
 ociocultural differences. Catholic Christians in Italy and Brazil have sev
 eral similarities\, including many family connections owing to immigration
  history. Brazil is the country with the highest number of Catholic Christ
 ians in the world\, and Italy is the hub of Roman Catholicism.\nThese cond
 itions allowed to conduct a survey on the adolescent population with two s
 tatistically significant national samples in 2014.\nWe adopted a clear def
 inition of evolution acceptance despite the complexity of the discussion\n
 on the subject in different languages\, taking acceptance as the expressio
 n of explicit recognition\nof the objective validity of known scientific s
 tatements about evolution under absolute\nanonymity. This definition consi
 ders two steps. The first is associated with scientific statements\nabout 
 evolution\, which must be clear and well known\, avoiding issues under dis
 cussion\,\nfor instance\, about the origin of life. Students must show not
  only a positive attitude towards\nevolution but also express clearly that
  a statement based on biological evolution is considered a\nvalid premise 
 to construct a judgement about the real world. The second step refers to o
 bjective conditions in which a person may admit his/her positive judgment 
 about a certain scientific statement.\nWe aimed to explore the strength of
  associations among nationality\, religion\, and the acceptance of evoluti
 on by students using multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) and statistica
 l tools\, with\nnationwide samples from two different countries.\nIn our r
 esearch we found that wider sociocultural factors predict the acceptance o
 f evolution to a higher degree than a religious background. Roman Catholic
  students showed significant differences between the two countries\, and t
 he gap between them was wider than between Catholics and non-Catholic Chri
 stians within Brazil. Our conclusions support those who argue that religio
 us affiliation is not the main factor in predicting the level of evolution
  acceptance.\nThe sociocultural environment and the level of evolutionary 
 knowledge seem to be more important in this regard. These results open up 
 new interpretative perspectives and provide a better understanding of atti
 tudes towards evolution.\n\nhttps://indico.unina.it/event/60/contributions
 /660/
LOCATION:Complesso S. Marcellino e Festo G4
URL:https://indico.unina.it/event/60/contributions/660/
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