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Dustin,

Sounds like an extremely interesting and useful study, I'm certain we'll
all want to go through your results and interpretations. 

I think you've highlighted the challenge very clearly, and hopefully
this sort of thinking can help form successful approaches. 

From what you've suggested those visitors with creationist perspectives
are aware of and accept a large number of the "bricks" of evolutionary
biology, it is just that they use these to construct a different
"house". This suggests that just giving them more "bricks" will only
lead to a bigger "house", and if we give them a few bricks they don't
like ( such as humans are also part of this system ) they wont use them.

I think that some of the previous discussions about science centres
promoting critical thinking as much as science process, content and
experience highlighted for me an avenue for addressing these sorts of
alternative perspectives and interpretations.

All in all its just another brick in the wall.

Cheers
Stuart Kohlhagen
Manager Questacon Exhibtiion Services
Questacon
The National Science and Technology Centre Canberra Australia




-----Original Message-----
From: Informal Science Education Network
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Dustin Growick
Sent: Friday, 1 June 2007 12:57 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: evolution at STCs

ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology
Centers Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related
institutions.
************************************************************************
*****

I felt compelled to add my two cents to the evolution/creationism
dialogue...

I just completed research at COSI Columbus as part of my Masters thesis
in Cultural Anthropology. I surveyed museum guests to determine (amongst
other
things) the following:

1) What percentage of COSI visitors consider themselves evolutionists?
2) How literate/familiar are creationists with the multiple components
of evolution (survival of the fittest, genetic variation, mutation,
inheritance)?

Preliminary data suggests that even adults that subscribe to a
creationist worldview aren't ignorant when it comes to the scientific
constructs and principles that make up evolutionary theory.  For
example,  when asked "In any given population of animals, some
individuals have traits that make them better at surviving and
reproducing than other individuals", over 94% of respondents claimed
this statement to be true.

This, coupled with and reinforced by other survey questions, seems to
suggest that STC visitors (and here I mean only adults) are accepting of
scientific principles when the word evolution is not explicitly used.
The problem seems to arise when using the term evolution, and when
extending these principles to apply to human beings. The idea of a human
exceptionalism perspective is not new (see Miller, Scott and Okamoto's
Public Acceptance of Evolution).  This may suggest that we start the
dialogue by discussing processes such as the arms race of pathogen
resistance to antibiotics, or by illustrating the ways in which
selective breeding in livestock and dogs is effectively man-made
selection.  Whatever the method, it couldn't hurt to show creationists
that the scientific constructs that they accept - and that we call
evolution - are happening all around them, all the time.

Just thought I'd put in my two cents.  I'll be sure to post more data as
my work progresses...

Dustin Growick

SUNY Stony Brook
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