A Day in the Life of Carlton Smith: The Bombardment of Evolution Misconceptions

Evolution is the central theme in any biology class (Dobzhansky, 1973; American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2011; Brownell et al., 2014). However, the United States has one of the lowest evolution acceptance rates globally (Miller, 2006). We see different acceptance levels throughout the general U.S. population, from about 45% to 60% (Pew Research Center, 2012; Gallup, 2017), which can change based on how questions are asked (Pew Research Center, 2019). College students show a similar pattern, with about 41% of college students in the United States rejecting human evolution (Barnes et al., 2008), which is different from scientists’ views on human evolution: 98% acceptance (Pew Research Center, 2012). There seems to be a difference in evolution acceptance rates between people not specialized in science and those most informed.

One reason for nonacceptance among college students in the United States is religiosity (Coyne, 2012): one’s level of commitment to religious practices and principles focusing on their belief in a god (Cornwall et al., 1986). Students with higher religiosity are more likely to reject evolution (Heddy & Nadelson, 2013). Students reject evolution when they find it incompatible with their religious beliefs or feel it contradicts what they have been taught (Cobern, 1994; Dagher & BouJaoude, 1997; Downie & Barron, 2000; Stanger-Hall & Wenner, 2014). If teaching students evolution threatens their beliefs, they will stick with what they know (Meadows et al., 2000) and refuse to learn evolution (Nadelson & Southerland, 2010). Kostas Kampourakis argues in his book Understanding Evolution (Kampourakis, 2014) that part of the problem is that experts see evolution as easy to understand, while many students find evolution challenging. Understanding students’ views on evolution knowledge and acceptance seems essential in evolution education (Barnes, Dunlop et al., 2020; Ferguson & Jensen, 2021).

Students may enter a classroom with an understanding of a concept or principle that differs from the generally accepted views or interpretations of that principle. In our review, we will define misconceptions this way. Leonard et al. (2014) highlighted the idea that determining the origin and structure of different ideas commonly held by students is crucial for future work in science education. Understanding how students go from misconceptions to scientific knowledge is essential for teachers to help students overcome these misconceptions through conceptual change (Scott et al., 1992). However, the prevalence of misconceptions is not necessarily unexpected, given that many secondary teachers themselves hold misconceptions (Yates & Marek, 2014; Glaze et al., 2015), and many shy away from the topic, based on their own religious discomfort (Meadows et al., 2000; Plutzer & Berkman, 2008) or their lack of confidence in their ability to teach these concepts in the face of potential student conflict (Meadows et al., 2000; Griffith & Brem, 2004; Meadows, 2009; Glaze et al., 2015; Borgerding, 2017; Tolman et al., 2021). Thus, teachers may be facing not only their own discomfort and potential lack of knowledge, but also a fear born of ignorance of what their students are bringing to the table. How little do their students know? What misconceptions do they hold? From where are these misconceptions stemming? What barriers are teachers going to have to help the students overcome? How have these barriers formed?

It is to these last questions that we address this review. In an effort to help teachers be prepared for the potential misconceptions and barriers they may face in their students, we follow a hypothetical high school student, Carlton Smith, through a typical day. Though this story is fictional, it is based on actual experiences that have been shared with us from students willing to share their personal interactions with evolution through interviews, office hours, and classroom discussions. The dialogue is our own, but the experiences Carlton has with evolution are real. And through this story, we will introduce teachers to the literature that has shed light on these issues and to the potential evidence-based solutions to each of these issues that exist. It is our goal that, armed with this understanding and this evidence based in an authentic scenario (i.e., a typical day for a typical student like Carlton), teachers can enter the classroom with more confidence, better preparation for what they are facing, and better tools for how they can best help their students overcome these barriers and accept the foundational theory of biology.

Carlton enters his eight o’clock biology class with a few minutes to spare. He sits next to one of his best friends, who is quietly giggling to himself.

“What is so funny?” Carlton asks.

His friend slowly shows him an image he was viewing on his phone. It is a picture of a chimpanzee shrugging its shoulders with its arms raised above its head. In white letters, it says, “If we came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?”

“It is so dumb that people believe in evolution,” his friend says. “I am interested to see how today goes; it should be a good laugh.”

Carlton’s friend went back to viewing his phone. “That’s right,” Carlton thought. “Today we are learning about evolution.”

In the last class, their teacher had said, “The state requires us to learn about evolution, but I will make it as quick and painless as possible.”

When class started, Carlton’s teacher talked about Charles Darwin, “the scientist who came up with the idea of evolution,” which he called natural selection. Throughout his class, Carlton heard phrases such as “survival of the fittest,” “organisms must adapt to survive,” “Darwin’s theory,” and “organisms choosing to change.” After the lecture, the instructor asked students to spend the last few minutes reading a textbook page. The text went into a little more detail on natural selection and how the environment determines the evolution of any given species on Earth. After the textbook reading, the teacher dismissed the class, and students went about their day.

Let us pause for a moment and discuss Carlton’s class. We get the impression from Carlton’s teacher that she does not want to teach evolution in the class but must because of state standards. Teaching evolution in high school is problematic for some teachers, to the point that they try to avoid it at all costs. As shown in Rutledge and Mitchell’s study (2002), 43% of teachers characterized their teaching of evolution as avoidance or said that it was briefly mentioned. This can be especially problematic for teachers in religious populations; sometimes, they opt out of teaching evolution and teach creationism instead. As Berkman and Plutzer (2011) showed in their study of 926 high school teachers across the United States, 13% taught creationism instead of evolution. Although the number of teachers teaching creationism in the classrooms is decreasing, teaching creationism in a science classroom is still present and problematic (Plutzer et al., 2020).

Studies suggest that evolution in high school biology may be absent or fraught with misinformation (Eglin, 1983; Johnson, 1985; Roelfs, 1987; Shankar & Skoog, 1993; Rutledge & Mitchell, 2002; Plutzer et al., 2020). When teachers hold misconceptions about evolution, students may acquire more misconceptions about evolution even though they may feel more confident in their evolution knowledge. Yates and Marek (2014) showed that students had more misconceptions about evolution after taking a high school biology class, and they noticed more misconceptions among students whose teachers held more misconceptions. A significant concern about evolution education lies with the association of misconceptions with words such as theory, fact, and proven (Bybee, 2001), as these words can impede a student’s ability to learn biological concepts (Rector et al., 2013). This can lead to misconceptions (Zukswert et al., 2019). Preservice science teachers also hold misconceptions about evolution, such as the idea that evolution always selects the healthier, better, and perfect individual or that creation and evolutionary theories are conflicting (Karatas¸, 2020). Secondary and high-school-level biology classes may even create misconceptions, as Karatas¸ in her 2020 study showed; 30% of students had evolution misconceptions, some of them possibly coming from their classes. The teachers, however, cannot and should not be the only ones to blame.

Misconceptions may be found throughout textbooks and sometimes can go undetected (Tshuma & Sanders, 2015). One study in a medical school concluded that seven different anatomy textbooks inaccurately described eye anatomy (Wood et al., 2020). If experts or educators rely on textbooks for accuracy, this can be concerning. In their 2015 study, Tshuma and Sanders found these misconceptions about evolution among students: “individual organisms evolve,” “organisms adapt during their lifetimes,” and “environmental change is essential for evolution”; they found these same misconceptions in the textbooks (Sanders & Makotsa, 2016). Another misconception students have is about the centrality of evolution to the study of biology. We, as biologists, claim evolution to be the central theme (Dobzhansky, 1973) in our biology classes. Still, our discussions of evolution within other topics are lacking (Nehm et al., 2009), especially our discussion of macroevolutionary processes (Padian, 2008, 2010). In summary, in an educational setting, there are many ways that students can develop misconceptions. This is concerning, but there are proposed ways to address misconceptions in the classroom.

One simple solution to combat misconceptions is to use a survey instrument that measures misconceptions among students. A survey can help educators find what misconceptions students are holding, and there are a few surveys that could be beneficial for educators. The first is the Biological Evolution Literacy Survey developed and tested by Yates and Marek (2014), which is a 23 item survey that has been used on high school students, college students, and high school teachers to determine evolution misconceptions. Educators could also use the Conceptual Inventory of Natural Selection (CINS) developed and tested by Anderson et al. (2002), which is a 20 item survey measuring common conceptions about natural selection. Both surveys have shown reliability, validity, and readability, which is important for students taking the survey. There are also many resources that you can use in the classroom that can help students learn about evolution; one source of these is HHMI BioInteractive (https://www.biointeractive.org). This website can be used for kindergarten through college students and may be a helpful resource for students and educators.

Workshops have also been shown to be effective. In one workshop attended by secondary teachers and religious teachers, Kaloi and colleagues (Kaloi et al., 2022) had activities for the teachers in which they measured hominin skull features and predicted relatedness. This workshop also allowed discussion about how we know what we know about hominid evolution and what things we do not yet know about hominid evolution. After the workshop, teachers were significantly more confident in their ability to teach human evolution (Kaloi et al., 2022). Although this example may not specifically deal with misconceptions, it can help educators build confidence in their ability to educate students and correct misunderstandings of evolution.

Let us continue following Carlton throughout his day.

On the way home, Carlton sits next to his older brother William on the bus.

“What are your thoughts on evolution?” He asks his brother.

“Evolution … like Pokémon?” replies his brother.

“No, like scientific evolution,” says Carlton with a bothered look on his face. “You know, how people say we ‘evolved’ from monkeys and such.”

“Don’t worry about it too much,” says William, comforting his brother. “It’s just a theory, and they don’t have much evidence for it. It is just a bunch of atheists that want us to stop believing in God. Every year, when they talk about evolution in school, many kids have questions just like you. So tonight, at youth group, Pastor Dan will talk about evolution and hopefully help you feel better about what we believe. I had similar questions when I learned about evolution as well, but the youth group was helpful.”

“Thanks, William, that makes me feel better. I am looking forward to tonight,” Carlton says with a smile on his face.

That night at the youth group, Carlton and a group of kids sat in their church building’s side room. Their chairs formed a half circle, and Pastor Dan stood in the middle at his portable podium right underneath the single light in the room as the kids all listened and watched.

Pastor Dan smiled and said, “I know many of you have questions about what you learned in school today. Evolution can be confusing and difficult to understand. I am here to help you make sense of evolution as best I can.” He grabbed his portable podium and started walking around within their arc of chairs. He praised science for its accomplishments. He said, “We know a lot of stuff about this world because of science. Science is the pursuit of understanding God’s handiwork. I love science, and I love religion. But, when science says we morphed from monkeys, it simply is not true. When science says that animals and plants can become different “unique” organisms, it simply is not true. It is possible that animals can adapt to new environments, and science seems to get that part right, but not much else in terms of the creation of the Earth.” Pastor Dan speaks more about God and the design and urges them, when confused, to start with the Bible and choose God. Pastor Dan said all these things in confidence that the Bible is the word of God and holds the truth of the creation. After it was over, Carlton’s mom was waiting to take him home.

She asked as he got into the car, “How was it, dear?”

“Fine, I guess,” he said exhaustedly. “It’s just a lot to take in right now. Evolution seems silly, and I think I have spent too much time thinking about it today. I just want to go home and relax.”

“It is silly,” his mom said. “Don’t think about it anymore than you need to; it is a waste of time. Just remember God lives, and the Bible is true.”

When Carlton was talking about evolution on the bus, his brother said evolution was “just a theory.” In American vernacular, a theory is often considered an imperfect fact (Gould, 1981) or “hunch” (Nelson et al., 2019). When the word theory is viewed by students using the everyday vernacular meaning, and when their teachers use it with its scientific meaning, it may cause confusion, leading to misconceptions. And many students struggle when they learn that science is an ever-changing field, especially when the word theory is involved. Larochelle and Désautels (Larochelle & Désautels, 1991; Nelson et al., 2019) interviewed students 14 to 16 years old and found that they thought of science as one person’s opinion (especially when theory was used) instead of as a collaboration by many people. In another study, Dagher and BouJaoude (2005) interviewed 15 students. Out of the 15 students, 3 were uncertain about evolution theory. These students had misconceptions about both evolution and scientific theories. Social interactions and the use of words with different meanings in everyday speech than in the scientific field can undoubtedly lead to misconceptions.

One of the biggest reasons students struggle with accepting evolution is religion (Coyne 2012) and the perceived conflict between religious beliefs and evolution (Barnes, Supriya et al., 2021). Many studies show that the more religious someone is, the less likely it is they will accept the theory of evolution (Ha et al., 2012; Rissler et al., 2014; Glaze et al., 2015; Barnes, Brownell, & Perez, 2017; Barnes et al., 2019; Dunk et al., 2017). The problem is not a single religion or religious belief but how religious people view science. According to Barnes and colleagues (Barnes, Dunlop et al., 2020), 48% of religious students included in their study said you have to be an atheist to accept evolution, indicating students would have to give up their belief in God to accept evolution. In Carlton’s case, his pastor said the same thing, religion and human evolution are incompatible. Some scientists suggest a similar view: science and religion are not compatible, and science can disprove a god(s) (Harris, 2005; Dawkins & Ward, 2006; Krauss, 2015; Coyne, 2016). Although many educators do not hold views like those of Carlton’s pastor or the above scientists, they still do not feel it is their responsibility to increase evolution acceptance (Barnes & Brownell, 2016). With most U.S. populations having a Judeo-Christian religious belief (Pew Research Center, 2016a), this can be troublesome for religious students taking science classes. The misconception that students have a presumed dichotomy in their lives, that they must choose their religious beliefs or accept evolution, is not scientific, nor is it helpful.

As educators, we still have students struggle with accepting, understanding, and learning about evolution, but there are many scientists and educators who are effectively teaching evolution in their classrooms. Barnes et al. (2017a) discuss the importance of scientists and teachers becoming culturally competent in educating students about evolution. They highlight important practices used to incorporate culturally competent methods in classrooms successfully, such as acknowledging a possible conflict between different parts of a student’s beliefs on evolution (Dagher & BouJaoude, 1997; Deniz et al., 2008), having students explore their personal views on evolution (Manwaring et al., 2015; Lindsay et al., 2019), providing students with a role model (Barnes, Elser, & Brownell, 2017; Holt et al., 2018; Ferguson & Jensen, 2021), and focusing on the nature of science (Dunk et al., 2017, 2019). These methods of teaching students have been shown to help decrease religion-evolution conflict while increasing evolution knowledge and acceptance, and most are relatively easy to incorporate into the classroom. One study showed that a six-minute discussion about religion and science compatibility was enough to change students’ views about evolution (Truong et al., 2018). It may also be helpful for educators to remember the bounded nature of science due to which only natural phenomena can be investigated. Teachers can also help students understand that science is agnostic and not atheistic, which has been shown to help religious students overcome the misconception that religion conflicts with science (Barnes, Dunlop et al., 2020) and thus help them keep their religious identity and become more accepting of evolution.

Let’s return to Carlton one more time. That night, Carlton finally has some time to relax and unwind from his long day at school and the youth group meeting. He decides to sit down and play one of his favorite games of all time, Pokémon. While playing, Carlton can make his favorite Pokémon evolve to its final and strongest evolutionary form by having it battle with another Pokémon. After he spends some time playing, he wonders if Pokémon’s evolution is like evolutionary theory. So, he logs in on Facebook and posts a question asking his friends their thoughts on Pokémon evolution and evolution theory. He gets a few responses. Some of his friends say, “Sounds the same as we learned in class today.” Others say that it is “more like a metamorphosis.” Confused, he decides to search Google and finds a lot of information about Pokémon evolution. One blog he reads talks about other possible theories on how Pokémon evolution happens and its plausibility. He also finds a published scientific paper about Pokémon evolution, where they used “trees” to build the Pokémon’s evolutionary history (Shelomi et al., 2012). He also finds many other blogs claiming that Pokémon evolution does not help people understand the theory of evolution. With all this information, he decides to take a break and watch TV.

This last scene shows how students may come across misrepresentations of evolution even during relaxing times. With the wide variety of popular media accessible to students, they may enter a science classroom with various illusions obtained through popular media. A popular book, Jurassic Park (Crichton, 1991), turned into a movie by Spielberg in 1993, is based on scientists’ ability to extract ancient DNA from dinosaurs, fill in missing fragments with frog DNA, add the DNA to ostrich eggs, and simply bring dinosaurs back to life. The fact that the dinosaurs live, breathe, and thrive is a biological implausibility glossed over quickly and casually (Van Riper, 2003), and many students think it is possible. Popular media may affect how people view science in general. Still, evolution is a subject often brought up in popular media, not always accurately, due to its controversial nature. Evolution is discussed in many popular media scenarios, from The Simpsons (see the 2019 Bosky essay on science and religion for more details) to other movies, series, and even popular kids’ shows and video games like Pokémon.

As a franchise, Pokémon is the highest-grossing video game franchise of all time (Burwick, 2018). In the Pokémon world, players collect and catch organisms (Pokémon; the word is both singular and plural) and use them in battles. A Pokémon battle, where two or more Pokémon fight each other, allows your Pokémon to become stronger. When you help your Pokémon become stronger, they can sometimes “evolve” into bigger and more powerful Pokémon. One Pokémon may evolve and get bigger, grow a pair of wings, or even lose limbs. When a Pokémon evolves, it happens instantly, but it is more akin to metamorphosis than the process of evolution. When students have been watching shows like Pokémon, where the word evolution is frequently used, albeit differently than in science, this exposure may affect how students perceive the theory of evolution. Some articles have claimed that using the word evolution in Pokémon may negatively influence how people learn about evolutionary theory in science classrooms (Chamary, 2016). Naturalish (2018) used scientific ideas such as enzymatic reactions and DNA recombination to explain Pokémon evolution’s plausibility better. Recently, a researcher and a big Pokémon fan tried to reconstruct the evolutionary history of Pokémon by creating a Pokémon phylogeny (Shelomi et al., 2012; Fortuna, 2016). These last few examples explain Pokémon evolution using scientific methods and may do more harm than good. As students come across inaccurate evolution statements, research shows, they may develop misconceptions and may have trouble following along with the educators (Osborne & Freyberg, 1985; Smith & Abell, 2008).

Popular media is not the only thing that may cause misconceptions about evolution. Social media is taking up most people’s time every day, especially among our younger populations. When Carlton had a question, he reached for his phone, wrote a post on Facebook, and waited to hear what his friends on Facebook had to say. He also decided to Google his question. Carlton found some articles and blogs that gave him some answers, but they often contradicted one another. He got similar results from his friends on Facebook. About 62% of adults get their news and updates from social media (Pew Research Center, 2016b), even though about 65% of Americans think the news on social media is inaccurate (Blatchford, 2018). This can promote misconceptions, especially considering that misinformation moves around faster and more in depth on social media than on news media (Vosoughi et al., 2018). We are seeing a new generation of students entering our classrooms. These students have grown up with smartphones and tablets. They have learned how to find information differently than past students because it is more readily available.

Let us consider Carlton again. At the beginning of our story, Carlton’s friend shows him a meme he found about evolution. The meme states this: “If we came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?” This statement is a misconception about evolution. This meme falsely gives the idea that evolution teaches that we come from monkeys. Is it possible that social media posts and memes influence students’ evolution acceptance?

Currently, we do not know the answer, and this is something worth studying. Very little research has been done on misconceptions in social media, and even less (i.e., none) has been done on potential interventions and solutions for correcting these. It is possible that the culturally competent methods used recently in teaching evolution (Barnes, Brownell, & Perez 2017) could also be applied to popular media. Cultural competence can help bridge the cultural gaps between students and educators and make science more inclusive (Barnes, Supriya et al., 2020; Barnes, Maas et al., 2021), and with the amount of time students are spending watching TV or scrolling through social media, popular media might be influencing how students view and interpret the world. Thus, cultural competence is important, but it is only one way to potentially solve the problem. Using popular media in our classrooms may be another solution.

Van Riper (2003) argues that although popular media sometimes gets it wrong, discussion can turn these incorrect moments into genuinely teachable moments. Talking about the complexity of Jurassic Park or the inaccuracies of Pokémon evolution in a classroom may increase student engagement, while allowing for a class discussion on the scientific flaws or accuracies. In ecology, conservation, and wildlife biology classrooms the Pokémon GO app has become popular because of its similarity to the natural world (Dorward et al., 2017; Lupton, 2017; Deslis et al., 2019). For example, when walking along a river in nature, you are likely to see birds, bugs, and fish; Pokémon GO would follow a similar pattern. While playing the game along a river, you would most likely see Pokémon that resemble birds, bugs, and fish. This app has been shown to benefit schools in urban areas where nature is not readily available to observe and collect data from (Lupton, 2017).

Educators need to be aware of the bombardment with evolution misconceptions students are obtaining through popular media. Using popular media references of evolution in our classrooms may make learning evolution more engaging and enriching for the students. It is also a way Of approach the inaccuracies of these references in a way that is culturally competent without attacking students’ cultural beliefs. The research on the effect of popular media on the acceptance of evolution is lacking, and with the amount of time students spend viewing popular media, using it in the classroom may be a good starting point to help engage students to think about what they view on popular media differently.

This review was written as a guide for teachers to better understand where their students are when they enter the classroom—what misconceptions they have and where these misconceptions came from. Hopefully, teachers who use this review will also have gained some new and better tools to overcome the cultural barriers that exist within their classrooms. Thus, they can enter the classroom with confidence to teach evolution most effectively. Using culturally competent practices and including popular media in our classrooms may be a unique way to approach students’ bombardment with evolution misconceptions.