Fig 1.
Illustration of study design for exploring the impact of conflict reducing evolution education practices on student acceptance of evolution.
Table 1.
Sample of students used in analyses broken down by gender, race/ethnicity, major, and semester of data collection.
Fig 2.
Student agreement that instructors showed compatibility between religion and evolution by providing examples of religious scientists, leaders, and others who accept evolution, disaggregated by course.
Each box in the plot represents the interquartile range (IQR) of the compatibility scores, with the vertical whiskers representing the spread of maximum and minimum scores, and line inside the box indicating the average score for each course. The dashed horizontal lines represent the overall average score within all samples. The plot is designed to provide a clear view of the distribution and central tendency of the compatibility scores within and between different courses.
Fig 3.
Illustration of interaction effects from linear mixed models of student religion and religiosity levels on the association between religion negativity during instruction and students’ human evolution acceptance after instruction.
The red lines are students who identify with no religious affiliation and students with religiosity measures more than 1 SD below the mean, which we have coded as having no religious affiliation. Values are based on model prediction of 3-way interaction between instruction, religion, and religiosity for human evolution acceptance. The shaded area represents the 95% confidence interval (CI) for the linear model. The simple slope analyses were significant only for highly religious Christian students (β = 0.04, SE = 0.01, p < 0.001).
Fig 4.
Student agreement that instructors were implementing inclusive teaching about evolution by giving students autonomy over their decisions to accept evolution, disaggregated by the 55 courses.
Each box in the plot represents the interquartile range (IQR) of the autonomy scores, with the vertical whiskers representing the spread of maximum and minimum scores, and line inside the box indicating the average score for each course. The dashed horizontal lines represent the overall average score within all samples. The plot is designed to provide a clear view of the distribution and central tendency of the autonomy scores across different courses.
Fig 5.
Illustration of non-significant interaction effects from linear mixed models of student religion and religiosity levels on the association between decision autonomy during instruction and students’ human evolution acceptance after instruction.
The red lines are students who identify with no religious affiliation and students with religiosity measures more than 1 SD below the mean, which we have coded as having no religious affiliation. Values are based on model prediction of 3-way interaction between instruction, religion, and religiosity for human evolution acceptance but this was not statistically singificant, indicating no statistical differences between groups. The shaded area represents the 95% confidence interval (CI) for the linear model.