Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Cultures of Science , cilt.8, sa.1, ss.24-37, 2025 (Hakemli Dergi)
This paper is about the transformation process of theoretical frameworks used in educational research on teaching evolution. To this end, some authors’ claims, findings and suggestions offered via particular studies are evaluated. While the evaluated authors have represented secularism as a barrier to teaching evolution in the United States, they have also offered pedagogically theistic or agnostic evolution as the best choice for the reconciliation of religion and evolution. This paper is particularly concerned with one of the explanatory theoretical frameworks—religious cultural competence in evolution education (ReCCEE), which is derived from the cultural competence framework—although others are visited as well. Even though the schools or authors who have applied ReCCEE do not directly reference constructivism, their studies are built upon constructivist pedagogy and epistemological idealism. They often have problematic issues such as obscurantism, ad hominem attacks, cherry-picking and an ill-formed appeal to authority. Besides, these papers present biased or uncritical views and ill-informed definitions of some terms, such as secularism and agnosticism.