We aimed to examine the acceptance of evolution and its relationship with religiosity among Greek biology university students and whether the attendance of an evolutionary biology course could affect the acceptance of evolution. In Greece the teaching of evolution has been downgraded from secondary education for years and Greeks exhibit a strong religiosity. Biology university students are those that will later, after their graduation, may become biology teachers in Greek secondary education. Our sample consisted of 603 Greek biology majors students. We conducted quantitative research and our research tool was developed using the MATE scale for exploring the acceptance of evolution and the CRS scale along with five more questions to investigate the level of religiosity. Results indicate that Greek biology students have a high acceptance of evolution, higher than the ones recorded in the USA and Turkey. Among them women scored less than men in the MATE scale and both are characterised as not very religious. Religiosity is negatively correlated, although not so much, with the acceptance of evolution and can predict almost ¼ of the variance in acceptance. The attendance of an evolutionary biology course seemed to be a factor that significantly affects the acceptance of evolution.

Evolution is a key concept of biology, fundamental to understand the world and address important societal problems, but research studies show that it is still not widely understood and accepted. Several factors are known to influence evolution acceptance and understanding, but little information is available regarding the impacts of the curriculum on these aspects. Very few curricula have been examined to assess the coverage of biological evolution. The available studies do not allow comparative analyses, due to the different methodologies employed by the authors. However, such an analysis would be useful for research purposes and for the development of appropriate educational policies to address the problem of a lack of evolution acceptance in some countries. In this paper we describe the steps through which we developed a valid and reliable instrument for curricula analysis known as FACE: “Framework to Assess the Coverage of biological Evolution by school curricula.” This framework was developed based on the “Understanding Evolution Conceptual Framework” (UECF). After an initial pilot study, our framework was reformulated based on identified issues and experts’ opinions. To generate validity and reliability evidence in support of the framework, it was applied to four European countries’ curricula. For each country, a team of a minimum of two national and two foreign coders worked independently to assess the curriculum using this framework for content analysis. Reliability evidence was estimated using Krippendorf's alpha and resulted in appropriate values for coding the examined curricula. Some issues that coders faced during the analysis were discussed and, to ensure better reliability for future researchers, additional guidelines and one extra category were included in the framework. The final version of the framework includes six categories and 34 subcategories. FACE is a useful tool for the analysis and the comparison of curricula and school textbooks regarding the coverage of evolution, and such results can guide curricula development.

The self-efficacy beliefs of in-service elementary school teachers in Greece were examined in an attempt to evaluate their biology teaching skills. For this purpose, we constructed a valid and reliable instrument consisting of a Likert-type questionnaire that was distributed to the target...

Background: Evolution is a unifying theme in biology and its understanding is essential to address sustainability problems. However, many people across the world do not understand evolution. Textbooks are among the most widely used educational resources and the way they depict evolution may greatly impact students’ scientific literacy in evolution. In this paper we investigate which evolution concepts are addressed in European science textbooks, from the 1st to the 9th grade. A content analysis using the ‘Framework for the Assessment of school Curricula on the presence of Evolutionary concepts”, was performed on textbooks from eight European countries: Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal and Slovenia. At least two experienced coders per country independently analysed the texts, images and activities, discussed the results and reached a final consensus. Results: Our results show that textbooks lack or rarely address concepts considered important for evolution understanding, notably the processes driving evolution and their daily life implications, limiting opportunities for education for sustainability. Conclusions: We recommend that science textbooks emphasize evolution and its processes since the first school years. This recommendation is particularly relevant for the analysed textbooks from Cyprus and Belgium, that cover less than 45% of the concepts important to evolution literacy.

Purpose: The development of health literacy skills is of paramount importance especially for students, as it is associated with their wellbeing and academic success. Assessing students' health literacy is necessary for its advancement. This study comes to fill the need for a valid multidimensional health literacy assessment instrument for secondary school students.Design/methodology/approach: Initially, the authors defined the conceptual framework within which the items of this instrument were generated. Its final form was obtained through three pilot studies. A test-retest followed and, finally, a nationwide survey was conducted on Greek seventh-, ninth- and tenth-grade students (N = 2,800).Findings: A 37-item instrument, the Health Literacy Assessment for Secondary School Students (HeLiASeSS), was developed which includes the following nine dimensions/skills of health literacy: “access to”, “understand” and “evaluate” (health information), “functional communication”, “interactive communication” and “critical communication”, “relying on health information”, “self-efficacy regarding health matters” and “intention for active citizenship regarding health matters”. HeLiASeSS proved to have good stability (ICC = 0.943) and high internal consistency reliability (a = 0.903).Originality/value: HeLiASeSS offers the possibility of a reliable and valid assessment of secondary school students' health literacy skills providing a multidimensional evaluation of this construct and is expected to be useful in interventions aiming at promoting this type of literacy.