‘God didn’t like it and detained them not to fly again:’ evolutionary understanding, acceptance, and perceived conflicts of students with interwoven religious beliefs

Evolution is challenging to teach because many students hold non-scientific conceptions and reject evolution due to perceived conflicts with their religion, values, cultures, or beliefs. Extensive research has been carried out in the Global North on students’ evolutionary understanding, acceptance, and conflict perceptions. This research has led to considerably different findings depending on the sample’s socio-cultural environment. In the Global South, less research has been conducted, and findings may be divergent from the Global North, especially in populations where both a monotheistic, Abrahamic world-religion and an indigenous religion are relevant, as is the case in Namibia. Thus, we conducted a questionnaire study with N = 221 upper-secondary Namibian students. The students struggled to understand evolution, having few scientific conceptions and more non-scientific conceptions, with some of them being culture-specific. They reported moderate evolutionary acceptance and perceived conflicts. Higher religious faith correlated with higher perceptions of conflicts. Evolutionary understanding was positively related to evolutionary acceptance. The findings indicate that enhancing evolutionary understanding and reducing perceived conflicts of religious students through inclusive and culturally-sensitive strategies may support students in accepting and learning about evolution. We especially propose implications for students with interwoven religious beliefs.