Preliminary Results on Malaysian Teachers Conception of Evolution

Abstract

In Malaysia, a multi-racial and religious nation, Islam is the most widely professed religion with the proportion of 61.3 per cent with other major religions embraced being Buddhism of 19.8%, Christianity of 9.2% and Hinduism of 6.3% based on the 2010 population census. The Biohead-Citizen research project aimed at analysing Malaysian teachers’ conceptions of evolution varying with their religions on Biology, Health and Environmental Education in promoting a better citizenship, including their affective and social dimensions. Using a questionnaire validated by the Biohead-Citizen research project (2004-2008), 204 teachers teaching in Primary and Secondary schools or finishing their teacher’ training in Kuching and Samarahan in the State of Sarawak, Malaysia was sampled to identify if they varied depending their religions. The six topics included health education; human reproduction and sex education; ecology and environmental education; human brain; human genetics and human origins. Significant differences were obtained with Muslim teachers being more creationist than their colleagues, and Buddhist teachers being more evolutionists. Christian teachers’ conceptions are intermediate between these two poles. These results are compared with those obtained in other countries. More than 70% of the Malaysian teachers were shown to be most radically creationist agreeing with the statement, It is certain that God created life. Accordingly, Malaysian teachers would have probably difficulty to teach the biological evolution, because creationism is not scientific and cannot be taught in biology. Nevertheless, for the origin of life as well as for the origin of humankind, 21% of Malaysian teachers are indicative of being evolutionist and creationist. They can accept and teach evolution, just believing that the processes of evolution are controlled by God.

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