Teaching

• 2009, May. The Creationist Down the Hall: Does It Matter When Teachers Teach Creationism? BioScience. (Subscription required for access.)
  "The responses of biology majors in their first year of college differed significantly from those of first-year non–biology majors on only 3 of the 20 items on the Measure of Acceptance of the Theory of Evolution survey instrument. Despite these differences, and regardless of whether students were or were not biology majors, several findings from the survey stand out: (a) surprisingly high percentages of students accepted creationism-based claims, (b) students’ views of evolution and creationism when they entered college were strongly associated with the treatment of evolution and creationism in the students’ high-school biology classes, and (c) on average, incoming biology majors’ views of evolution and creationism were similar to those of nonmajors. In this article, these results are discussed relative to the ongoing popularity of creationism among biology majors and biology teachers."
  See the ScienceDaily article, High School Teachers Influence Student Views Of Evolution & Creationism for a summary of the study.

• 2009, April 1. Spring 2009 Louisiana Survey Reilly Center for Media & Public Affairs/Manship School of Mass Communication.
  "Creationism in the Public Schools: The Louisiana Science Education Act passed this past year allows school boards to approve supplemental materials designed to encourage “critical thinking” about leading scientific theories, but is directed primarily at the teaching of evolution in public schools. As a result, the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology moved its annual meeting from New Orleans to Salt Lake City. When it comes to public opinion, a majority of Louisianans – 57.5 percent - support teaching creationism in the public schools while 31 percent oppose teaching creationism and 11 percent say they are unsure or do not know. Part of the issue resides in an understanding of scientific support for evolution. Forty-percent of respondents said that evolution is not well supported by evidence and accepted in the scientific community and 21 percent said they did not know or were unsure. Thirty-nine percent said correctly that evolution is well supported by evidence." p. 10.

• 2009, March. Clergy Voices: Findings from the 2008 Mainline Protestant Clergy Voices Survey and 2008 Mainline Protestant Clergy Voices Survey FINAL Top Line Results. Public Religion Research. Authors: Robert P. Jones and Daniel Cox. The first document is a general but lengthy overview with denominational break downs. The second gives more specific information about the percentages, but not the denominational breakdown. From the FINAL Top Line Results:
  page 1: Teaching about evolution in public schools (how often spoken out): 3% Very Often, 13% Often, 42% Seldom, 42% Never.
  page 3: Creationism should be taught alongside evolution in public school biology classes: 15% Strongly agree, 21% Agree, 10% Not Sure, 19% Disagree, 35% Strongly Disagree.
  page 5: The Bible is the inerrant Word of God, both in matters of faith and in historic, geographical, and other secular matters: 15% Strongly Agree, 14% Agree, 4% Not Sure, 35% Disagree, 32% Strongly Disagree.
  page 5: Evolution is the best explanation for the origins of life on earth: 13% Strongly Agree, 31% Agree, 13% Not Sure, 20% Disagree, 23% Strongly Disagree.

• 2009, February 4. Darwin Debated: Religion vs. Evolution Pew Research Center.
  "Recent public opinion polls indicate that challenges to Darwinian evolution have substantial support among the American people. According to an August 2006 survey by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, 63 percent of Americans believe that humans and other animals have either always existed in their present form or have evolved over time under the guidance of a supreme being. Only 26 percent say that life evolved solely through processes such as natural selection. A similar Pew Research Center poll, released in August 2005, found that 64 percent of Americans support teaching creationism alongside evolution in the classroom."
  A summary and analysis of previous Pew Research Center surveys.

• 2009, February 3. Report on 2009 Zogby Poll about Evolution and Academic Freedom Zogby Poll/Discovery Institute.
  "A large majority of respondents (80%) agree that teachers and students should have academic freedom to discuss both the strengths and weaknesses of evolution as a scientific theory, with more than half (54%) saying they strongly agree. Only 16% disagree."
  "Although the media consistently portray support for the freedom to discuss both sides of the evolution debate as coming primarily from conservative Christians, these poll results show something far different and will shatter some preconceptions about who supports letting students hear a balanced presentation on Darwinian evolution."

• 2008, November. Teachers Dismiss Calls For Creationism To Be Taught In School Science Lessons Ipsos MORI Poll. (United Kingdom)
  "Nearly half (47%) of primary and secondary school teachers disagree that creationism should be taught alongside the theory of evolution and the Big Bang theory in science lessons in England and Wales, new research by Ipsos MORI(1) has found. This rises to two in three (65%) of those interviewed who cite science as their subject specialism (2). A minority of all teachers (37%) do that creationism should be taught (3). Science specialists in the sample are significantly less likely then average to agree it should be taught, although nearly three in ten (29%) do say this."

• 2008, November. Third of teachers would give creationism the same status as evolution in classrooms TV Teacher Poll. (United Kingdom)
  "Nearly a third (31.1%) of teachers agree that creationism or intelligent design should be given the same status as evolution in the classroom, according to a poll of over 1200 Teachers TV ‘Associates’. The poll, published to coincide with a week of programming dedicated to the evolution debate, also revealed that nearly a third (30.1%) of schools already consider creationism or intelligent design to some extent during science lessons."

• 2008, May 20. Evolution and Creationism in America's Classrooms: A National Portrait National Survey of High School Biology Teachers. PLoS Biology, Vol. 6, No. 5. Authors: Michael B. Berkman, Julianna Sandell Pacheco, Eric Plutzer.
  "We advance this long tradition of surveying teachers with reports from the first nationally representative survey of teachers concerning the teaching of evolution. The survey permits a statistically valid and current portrait of US science teachers that complements US and international surveys of the general public on evolution and scientific literacy and on evolution in the classroom. Between March 5 and May 1, 2007, 939 teachers participated in the study, either by mail or by completing an identical questionnaire online. Our overall response rate of 48% yielded a sample that may be generalized to the population of all public school teachers who taught a high school–level biology course in the 2006–2007 academic year, with all percentage estimates reported in this essay's tables and figures having a margin of error of no more than 3.2% at the 95% confidence level." Pdf version of Evolution and Creationism in America’s Classrooms

• 2008, February 15. Faith trumps science: Proposed teaching standards are at odds with what most Floridians believe. Times Research/St Petersburg Times.
  "Only 22 percent want public schools to teach an evolution-only curriculum, while 50 percent want only faith-based theories such as creationism or intelligent design, according to a new St. Petersburg Times survey."

• 2006, July 6-19. Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life survey conducted by Schulman, Ronca & Bucuvalas (SRBI).

• 2006, January 30. BBC Survey On The Origins Of Life BBC Horizon Poll. (United Kingdom)
  "Ipsos MORI carried out a survey for the BBC Horizon programme, looking at beliefs among the British public on how life started in earth and what should be taught in science classes on this topic. For the survey, a nationally representative quota sample of 2,112 adults was interviewed by Ipsos MORI throughout Great Britain. Interviews were conducted face-to-face in-home between 5-10th January 2006. Data are weighted to be representative of the adult (15+) population."

• 2005, May 24. Americans Weigh In on Evolution vs. Creationism in Schools: Responses vary by religiosity, education, ideology CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll.
  "In March, Gallup asked Americans whether they would be upset if public schools in their communities taught the theory of creationism -- "the idea that human beings were created by God in their present form and did not evolve from other species of animals." A majority, 76%, say they would not be upset if creationism were taught in their schools, while 22% say they would be upset."

• 2005, March 19-April 29. Evolution & Intelligent Design: Understanding Public Opinion Matthew C. Nisbet/Survey Research Institute of Cornell University.
  "In our national survey, we first asked respondents to rate on a scale from one to 10, where one is little attention and 10 is very close attention, how attentive they were to newspaper and TV news coverage of a number of contemporary issues, including the debate over teaching alternatives to evolution. Across TV and newspaper coverage, the data indicate that Americans pay comparably close attention to the issue of evolution relative to other issues, such as the debate over stem cell research and national politics."

• 2004, November 18-21. Creationism Trumps Evolution: Most Americans Do Not Believe Human Beings Evolved CBS News/New York Times Poll.
  "Americans do not believe that humans evolved, and the vast majority says that even if they evolved, God guided the process. Just 13 percent say that God was not involved. But most would not substitute the teaching of creationism for the teaching of evolution in public schools."

• 2003, July 28. The Teaching Of Evolution And Intelligent Design In New Mexico's Public Schools IDnet-NM/Zogby Poll.
  "The Intelligent Design Network, inc., New Mexico Division (IDnet-NM), announced the results of two polls conducted recently by Zogby International regarding attitudes in New Mexico concerning the teaching of evolution and intelligent design in New Mexico's public schools. The first poll was of parents of schoolchildren K-12 while the second poll focused on the scientific community and included New Mexico's national labs and universities. Because of the relatively large margin of error associated with the results of the university survey, those results are reported only in the tabulated data and not incorporated in any general analysis."

• 2002, October 11. Majority of Ohio Science Professors and Public Agree: 'Intelligent Design' Mostly About Religion University of Cinncinnati's Internet Public Opinion Laboratory.
  "In the most recent Ohio Poll, respondents were first asked: " Do you happen to know anything about the concept of 'intelligent design'?" The vast majority (84%) said "no"; 14% said "yes"; and the rest (2%) were "not sure". Not surprisingly, college graduates were significantly more likely to say they knew something about it (28% of them) than were high school graduates (7%) or those with less than a high school education (6%)."

• 2002, May 28-June 4. A majority of those surveyed want evolution, intelligent design to get equal time in school Cleveland Plain Ohio Poll/Mason-Dixon Polling and Research.
  "A clear majority of the state's residents - 59 percent - favor teaching evolution in tandem with intelligent design in public-school science classes, according to a statewide Plain Dealer Ohio Poll."
  Additional poll results: Evolution vs intelligent design, What to teach, A closer look at what to teach, What to Believe About the Origins of Life, Should Leaders Declare Beliefs, Public Wants to Know Where Taft Stands, and Survey polled 1,507 Ohioans.
  Word Doc format of Plain Dealer poll.

• 2002, May 8. Results from Ohio poll on Darwin’s theory of evolution, public schools Discovery Institute/Zogby Poll.
  "Zogby International conducted interviews of 702 adults in Ohio, chosen at random. All calls were made from Zogby International headquarters in Utica, N.Y., from Tuesday, May 7 to Wednesday, May 8, 2002. The survey has a margin of sampling error of +/- 3.8%. Margins of error are higher among sub-groups. Slight weights were applied to region, age, party, race, and gender to more accurately reflect the population. Note: Percentages have been rounded to the nearest whole number and might not total 100."
  Crosstabs data.

• 2001, September 21. Zogby America Report Discovery Institute/Zogby Poll.
  "This nationwide poll of 1,202 American adults was conducted by Zogby International from Saturday, August 25 to Wednesday, August 29, 2001. All telephone calls were made from Zogby International headquarters in Utica, N.Y. The margin of error is +/-3.0%. Margins of error are higher in sub-groups."
  "More than seven in ten (71%) respondents believe Darwin’s theory of evolution should be taught, but such instruction should include evidence against the theory. Fourteen percent are not sure."

• 2001, February 14. Public Favorable to Creationism: But prefers it be taught along with evolution Gallup Poll.
  "The American public favors teaching creationism in schools along with evolution (68% favor and 29% oppose), but is opposed to the idea of teaching creationism instead of evolution, by a 55% to 40% margin. Further, Gallup polls conducted last year suggest that a quarter of Americans believe teaching creationism should be required of the public schools, while another 56% say creationism should at least be offered to students as a subject of study."
  Same Gallup Poll as in Kansas Voters Fail to Re-Nominate Anti-Evolution School Board Members: Public supports teaching creationism, but not exclusively

• 2000, March. Evolution and Creationism in Public Education: An In-Depth Reading of Public Opinion People for the American Way Poll.
  "The overwhelming majority of Americans (83%) want Evolution taught in public schools. While many also support the in-school discussion of religious explanations of human origins, they do not want these religious explanations presented as “science”. They would like Creationist ideas to be taught about in classes other than science (such as Philosophy) or discussed as a “belief”. Only a minority (fewer than 3 in 10) want Creationism taught as science in public schools."
  Graphic of poll results.

• 1999, November. Teaching creation and evolution in schools: Solid research reveals American belief Jerry Bergman.
  "Fifty studies were reviewed that surveyed opinions on teaching origins in public schools. The vast majority found about 90 % of the public desired that both creation and evolution or creation only be taught in the public schools. About 90 % of Americans consider themselves creationists of some form, and about half believe that God created humans in their present form within the past 10,000 years. In America, about 15 % of high school teachers teach both evolution and creation, and close to 20 % of high school science teachers and about 10,000 scientists (including more than 4,000 life scientists) reject both macroevolution and theistic evolution. Although the vast majority of Americans desire both creation and evolution taught in school, the evolutionary naturalism worldview dominates, revealing a major disparity between the population and the ruling élite."

• 1999, August. Fox News/Opinion Dynamics Poll.

• 1979. The Attitude of University Students Toward the Teaching of Creation and Evolution In the Schools Jerry Bergman/Bowling Green State University.
  "According to all recent studies, the vast majority of the public favors teaching both creation and evolution in the schools (Bliss 1978, Bergman 1979). It is usually assumed, though, that while the public may favor teaching both theories, the teaching profession favors teaching only the theory of evolution. To further answer this question, the writer developed the following opinionnaire which was administered to 442 undergraduates (most of whom were in their last year of a teacher-training program) and 74 graduate students taking courses in the area of biology."

• 1976. ICR Midwest Center Newsletter.
  "...a 1976 random phone survey in the Midwest, a random home survey in California and a newspaper survey in the Chicago area all yield similar results in the public opinion regarding the teaching of origins in our public schools."