ABSTRACT
There are likely many explanations for the difficulty students have in comprehending and accepting evolutionary theory. This chapter addresses a set of reasons that we believe need further research and more attention by educators, particularly at the college level. We focus on what psychologists have termed “personal epistemology” (Hofer & Pintrich, 1997, 2002), individual conceptions of knowledge and knowing. In this chapter, we provide a conceptual overview of personal epistemology and examples of empirical evidence from our research on how students’ beliefs about knowledge and knowing are related to their comprehension and acceptance of the theory of evolution. Our goal is to contribute to building conceptual models of students’ grasp of this important issue so that our educational systems may be more effective in teaching scientific literacy.
