Lessons for Teaching Evolution

As Monya Baker tells the story from a “boots on the ground” perspective of the Kitzmiller vs. Dover case, in “Of Pandas and Science Curriculum” (Issues, Fall 2025), it becomes apparent that the issue of teaching evolution in public schools is much more nuanced than a caricaturized “battle” between faith and science. In fact, as Baker points out, there are many people who see faith and science as compatible, making the issue of what to teach in public science classrooms more about respecting the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause and about the importance of “staying in our lane,” than about pitting evolution against religious belief.

I am one of those people who see faith and evolution as entirely compatible, and who would also vehemently defend the separation of science teaching from theological promotion in public classrooms. As a mother of four boys and an active Sunday School instructor in my local congregation, I see it as my role, not the school’s role, to teach my children religion. As a biologist and science educator, I see it as my role in the classroom to teach science in an agnostic, purely scientific fashion. But as an expert in science pedagogy and communication strategies, I recognize the necessity of being critically cognizant of, and meticulously intentional in, the way in which we communicate about evolution.

The field of science communication has revealed a great deal about effective strategies for communicating in ways that are culturally sensitive. There are methods of teaching evolution that avoid prompting identity-protective cognition or scientific impotence discounting, that protect recipients of our communication from hazardous threats to their identity or family connections, and that facilitate compatibility frameworks allowing individuals to successfully cross the border between their cultural world and the world of science. This is a field that has been actively studied, and resulted in a large body of publications, frameworks, and resources.

As scientists who value evidence-based decisions and practices, we should be at the forefront of utilizing communication strategies that have been tested and validated for communicating about evolution. Our sincere efforts to follow the science of effective communication can facilitate our efforts to keep science curricula scientific and free of religious influence. It can also help in our efforts to emphasize the importance of an understanding of evolution to human and environmental health. And we can accomplish both efforts while maintaining a respect for the substantial religious identity of the American public.

Jamie Jensen

When it comes to teaching evolution in public schools, Monya Baker offers a compelling call to collective, vigilant, peaceable action that is extrajudicial whenever possible. I offer my story to second this call.

My involvement began in 2005, the year of the so-called Panda Trial that Baker examines and my first year as a chemist and science teacher educator at a public, secular university, located about 45 miles from Dover, Pennsylvania, ground zero for the trial. I was furious about what the school board had done to the three high school science teachers and community to undermine evolutionary theory and to promote contrived dualisms between faith and science.

Judge John E. Jones III’s expansive writing did much more than foment my outrage. It opened my eyes to the judicial history from Scopes through the religiously motivated, protean strategies of scriptural literalism rooted in Christian fundamentalism, creation science, “equal time” laws and resolutions, and intelligent design.

Jones’s decision sparked 20 years of steadfast action. The pastor at my Presbyterian church asked me to teach a Sunday school class on science and religion, which I have since adapted for other faith communities and public audiences. I anxiously gave a presentation about teaching science topics with religious implications at a conference of state science educators, where I befriended teachers who live this reality. I host speakers at my university, and my colleagues are highly supportive of this work that blurs the lines between teaching, scholarship, and service.

A group of us, many of whom were directly involved in the Panda Trial, wrote a primer for science educators, Making Sense of Science and Religion: Strategies for the Classroom and Beyond, published by NSTA Press. I also teach an honors seminar that epitomizes the word interdisciplinary, in that no one intellectual field “owns” the science-religion conversation. This takes away the burdens of my needing to be an expert or my fear of being an impostor.

Finally, Jones and others that Baker cites inspired me to local action by running for the school board. Library books, climate change, social studies curricula, and “school choice” movements tend to be the hotly contested issues of the day. We are fortunate to have a board that understands the difference between governance and management in that we do not meddle in classroom pedagogy. Some districts are not so lucky.

As Baker suggests, elections and connections matter, and there are risks to leaving these issues to be settled in courtrooms and to remain in familiar, intellectual silos. In addition to any advice you may glean from my story, I encourage you to find a good starting audience and work with a small and committed group that you trust. The sociologist of religion Elaine Howard Ecklund, of Rice University’s Baker Institute, has asserted for many years that science-religion “boundary pioneers” are sorely needed to bring peace and insight into classrooms, faith communities, public venues, and homes. So please consider joining in the hard, necessary work of peacemaking.

Joe Shane