An Examination of Constructivism, Active Learning, and Reflexive Journaling and Their Independent and Combined Effects on Student Acceptance of Biological Evolution

Instruction that increases acceptance of evolution is essential to effective biology instruction, but instruction about evolution is not consistently correlated with increased levels of acceptance. Does the pedagogical approach utilized make the difference? Using a curriculum that demonstrably increases evolution acceptance, we compare multiple pedagogical styles (behaviorist vs. constructivist, active vs. less active, and journaling vs. not journaling) in a full-factorial design to test the hypotheses that pedagogy designed for constructivism, active learning, and reflexive journaling will increase the probability that students' acceptance of evolution increases. Though we observed statistically significant acceptance gains, no treatments were statistically different from the other treatments regarding those acceptance gains. Evolution acceptance is possible despite the use of constructivist-designed or behaviorist-designed pedagogy, active learning or less active learning, or maintaining a reflexive journal or not. There is no indication that any combination of these instructional approaches has a greater effect than any other on evolution acceptance.