EVOLUTION EDUCATION IN PAPUA-NEW-GUINEA - TRAINEE TEACHERS VIEWS

Educated Papua New Guineans' conceptual ecologies need to accommodate competing and conflicting traditional ethnoscientific, Western religio us and modern scientific paradigms. Papua New Guinea is a constitution ally self-declared 'Christian country' and evolution is a controversia l issue. The upper secondary school biology syllabus contains a termin ating unit on evolution but the curriculum is of expatriate design and the rapid localisation of senior educational positions makes the view s of indigenous teaching personnel a high research priority, particula rly in the light of the current upgrading of secondary teacher trainin g to degree level. This paper presents data arising from a study of tr ainee primary and secondary science teachers' views towards evolution education. Primary science trainees were found to exhibit a poor aware ness of the centrality of evolution to modern biology. For secondary s cience trainees, it was found that exposure to zipper secondary school biology, in spite of adding little to students' knowledge about evolu tion, was associated with their increasingly positive attitudes coward s evolution education, as was the dual acceptance of evolution and rel igious belief.