Despite concerted efforts by science educators to understand patterns of evolutionary reasoning in science students and teachers, the vast majority of evolution education studies have failed to carefully consider or control for item feature effects in knowledge measurement. Our study explores whether robust contextualization patterns emerge within…

An anonymous survey instrument was used for a ten year study to gauge college student attitudes toward evolution. Results indicate that students are most likely to accept evolution as a historical process for change in physical features of non-human organisms. They are less likely to accept evolution as an ongoing process that shapes all traits…