Introduction

Evolution, which is a controversial and sensitive issue because of its historical background, refers to the processes of change of many elements such as society, culture, economy, language, the universe, technology, car models, etc. over time. Although the term 'evolution' in the language of biology addresses the change over time, the biological evolution refers to the process of speciation as a result of the accumulation of genetic changes on the molecular level that occur over generations unlike its use in the daily language. Evolution has a key function for many subjects such as understanding the mechanism of antibiotic resistance and fighting antimicrobial resistance, treatment of various medical disorders and brain damages, prevention of diseases, fighting AIDS, understanding the mechanisms of cancers developing new treatment options and vaccines, development of artificial neural networks and evolutionary robotics, seed breeding, development of nutrition and agricultural policies, development of biological weapons and fighting strategies against them, etc. As seen, understanding of evolution, beyond being a necessity of modern science, has a decisive role in human health, the future and national security of countries. Therefore, understanding evolution is very important for society. Science and biology teachers act as bridges between scientists and the public about the understanding of evolution by society. However, studies have shown serious misconceptions and difficulty in understanding the contents of evolution occurring in students as a result of teachers' inadequate or incorrect information about the nature of science and evolution and their telling evolutionary biology contents in line with their ideological views. Therefore, we need to focus on teacher training and questioning the quality of biological evolution education got by prospective science and biology teachers during their undergraduate years. However, when the literature on this subject is examined in Turkey, it is seen that the number of available studies are not satisfactory. Besides, no research has been reached on what kind of studies have been carried out on evolution education for prospective science and biology teachers in Turkey. Whereas, to be able to look at the subject holistically, to present explanatory information about the situation of evolution education in Turkey for science and biology prospective teachers, and in this way to guide future research, it is necessary to determine what kind of studies should be done in the literature and what the deficiencies in this field are. Therefore, in this research, it is aimed to examine the studies on the evolution education by thematic analysis method for prospective science and biology teachers in Turkey which performed between 2008-2019 years.

Methodology

The thematic content analysis method is preferred in the research. The year of the oldest publication available in the studies to be reviewed is 2008. For this reason, the investigation encompasses the studies between 2008-2019. The studies to be examined were reached by searching Google Academic Search Engine, Dergipark Academic, TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM TR Index, YÖK National Thesis Centre and Science Direct. The scanning was made in Turkish and English using the words “evolution”, “pre-service science teacher”, “prospective science teacher”, “science teacher candidate”, “pre-service biology teacher”, “prospective biology teacher”, “biology teacher candidate” and “undergraduate students”. The last scanning was conducted in March 2019. Thus, a total of 24 studies consisting of 21 articles and 3 theses were evaluated. The research is limited only to studies conducted with prospective science and biology teachers and focused directly on biological evolution. During the process of data analysis, the steps of being familiar with the data, generation of initial codes and creation of categories, reviewing the patterns were followed. Created themes were determined as purpose, method, data collection tools, results, and recommendations. The studies were subjected to content analysis in line with these themes, and the codes and categories were created. Coding was made in the form of a sentence that summarizes the meaning for each paragraph of the data. The codes and categories were classified taking into account the themes created. As a result, 104 codes and 30 categories were determined. The compliance ratio of the codes was calculated using the reliability formula proposed by Miles and Huberman (1994). The consistency of the codes between researchers was calculated 94%.

Results, Conclusion, and Discussion

The results obtained from the thematic analysis have indicated that the findings of the studies conducted in the last 11 years are similar, evolution is not sufficiently understood by science and biology prospective teachers and the religiosity/conservatism factor has a negative correlation with the acceptance of the evolution theory. When explaining the reasons for this situation, it is seen that the Bible, the Qur'an itself and the Qur'anic interpretations are handled in the same context and subjected to a wholesale evaluation. But it is important to realize that reflecting the religion-science conflict in the West and the results of this conflict to Islam, Islamic history and culture through a Western-centric generalization cannot eliminate the obstacles in front of the evolution education in Turkey. Because of this, it is considered that there is need to the multidisciplinary studies through in-depth qualitative interviews intended for the effects of not only the interpretations of the Bible and the Qur’an,but also effects of the sliding of the discussions on the evolution theory to the ideological and political ground contrary to religion. In addition, the lack of long term experimental studies aiming to determine the effects of teaching strategies, methods and techniques on the understanding of evolution and providing a solution to the question “how we can teach evolution to the prospective science and biology teachers in Turkey?” is an important deficiency in the field. It is also considered that further research is needed including not only the scales but also the misconception diagnostic tests and achievement tests are used as data collection tools.

 Key words: Evolution education, prospective science teacher, prospective biology teacher, thematic analysis, religion, Qur’an, Bible, the creation