The impact of an education program about evolution on the shift from teleological to evolutionary explanations among Belgian children around the age of ten

Abstract

It has been shown that in the U.S. and in the U.K. children up to the age of ten adhere to teleological explanations for the existence of living and non-living objects. Around the age 10 children tend to shift away from being "intuitive theists" to hold a stronger belief in evolution as the driving force behind the emergence and evolution of life on earth, including the emergence and evolution of human mankind. To test whether these results replicate in different cultures, we set up a similar study in Belgium, as a next study case to support these claims cross-culturally. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.