Undergraduate Students’ Attitudes Towards the Theory Of Evolution

Abstract

The present study aims at investigating the attitudes of undergraduate students towards the theory of
evolution (TOE). Even though the body of literature related TOE is abundant, there is limited conducted research in
Turkey.The independent variables used in the present study are as follows: faculty, programme, graduated high
school, evolution lesson, lesson including evolution, activity related to evolution, educational level of mother,
educational level of father, participants’ income, participants’ families income, and the term described by participants’
themselves. The total number of participants is 849 from two universities in Turkey. To measure of students’ attitudes
towards TOE , Rutledge & Sadler’s (2007) survey is used. The reliability of scale (Cronbach ?) is .80.The results
revealed that depending on faculty, evolution lesson, programme, the term described by participants’ themselves,
educational level of mother, educational level of father and participants’ income variables, students scores change
statistically significant at the level of .05.