Eric Plutzer

Becoming a Habitual Voter: Inertia, Resources, and Growth in Young Adulthood

This paper reframes our inquiry into voter turnout by making aging the lens through which the traditional resource and cost measures of previous turnout research are viewed, thereby making three related contributions. (1) I offer a developmental theory of turnout. This framework follows from the observation that most citizens are habitual voters or habitual nonvoters (they display inertia). Most young citizens start their political lives as habitual nonvoters but they vary in how long it takes to develop into habitual voters. With this transition at the core of the framework, previous findings concerning costs and resources can easily be integrated into developmental theory. (2) I make a methodological contribution by applying latent growth curve models to panel data. (3) Finally, the empirical analyses provide the developmental theory with strong support and also provide a better understanding of the roles of aging, parenthood, partisanship, and geographic mobility.

Evolution and creationism in America's classrooms: a national portrait.

Despite many legal and legislative decisions, a new study shows that one in eight high school biology instructors teach their students that creationism or intelligent design is a valid alternative to evolutionary biology.

Defeating Creationism in the Courtroom, But Not in the Classroom

Sixty percent of U.S. high school biology teachers are not advocates for either evolutionary biology or nonscientific alternatives. Just over 5 years ago, the scientific community turned its attention to a courtroom in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Eleven parents sued their Dover, Pennsylvania, school board to overturn a policy explicitly legitimizing intelligent design creationism. The case, Kitzmiller v. Dover, followed a familiar script: Local citizens wanted their religious values validated by the science curriculum; prominent academics testified to the scientific consensus on evolution; and creationists lost decisively. Intelligent design was not science, held the court, but rather an effort to advance a religious view via public schools, a violation of the U.S. Constitutions Establishment Clause (1). Many scientists cheered the decision, agreeing with the court that the school board displayed “breathtaking inanity” [p. 765 (1)]. We suggest that the cheering was premature and the victory incomplete.

Stay in School, Don’t Become a Parent: Teen Life Transitions and Cumulative Disadvantages for Voter Turnout

We investigate three important life transitions—becoming a parent, getting married, and dropping out or graduating from high school—on the development of civic engagement. We qualify the socioeconomic status and resources frameworks by arguing that effects should differ across racial and ethnic lines. We address these issues by analyzing data from a nationally representative, 12-year panel study comprising more than 12,000 eighth graders in 1988 (National Educational Longitudinal Survey, 1988-2000). We show that early parenthood can have important and lasting impacts on voter turnout many years later. For Whites, early parenthood leads to increased risk of dropping out of high school. High school interruption has major negative impacts on later turnout, even when the student eventually returned to earn a diploma. The findings advance our understanding of the crucial period of adolescence by showing how race and event timing condition the impact of formative life events on later political participation.

Scientific Expertise and the Culture War: Public Opinion and the Teaching of Evolution in the American States

The teaching of evolution in public schools has been a central element in the nations “culture wars” since the 1920s and remains a contentious issue today. Content standards for the teaching of biology have been flashpoints for conflict, with well publicized battles occurring in state governments, in federal courts, and in local school districts. We show that a full understanding of evolution politics at the state level must simultaneously account for three important features. First, cultural politics typically includes an important role for public opinion. Second, scientists and their professional organizations have actively sought a monopoly on defining what is and is not science by marginalizing their uncredentialled opponents and by erecting boundaries that buffer science policy from the influence of politics and public opinion. Third, in the American federal system courts rarely settle cultural issues but merely narrow the space within which politics can operate. In accounting for these features, we explain why court victories for science have had only limited impacts and provide a model for understanding other issues—such as sex education, stem cell research, and global warming—in which moral and ideological arguments may conflict with scientific consensus.

Enablers of Doubt How Future Teachers Learn to Negotiate the Evolution Wars in Their Classrooms

Evolution deniers do not need to establish their own scientific position but merely cast doubt on some aspect of evolution or obtain a small amount of legitimacy for creationism or intelligent design to sow sufficient doubt in the mainstream. This doubt is one of three pillars, along with demands for equal time and the incompatibility of science and religion, that Eugenie Scott has argued define contemporary anti-evolution efforts. High school biology teachers play a crucial role in whether a high school biology course reinforces the scientific consensus or whether it confers legitimacy on creationist perspectives with pedagogical strategies consistent with the three pillars. As we have shown elsewhere, many public school teachers do contribute to public opinion on evolution. But where do these norms come from? This article begins to answer this question, using data from our 2007 National Survey of High School Biology Teachers and new data from a series of focus groups with preservice teachers. We find that, as early as in the preservice college years, teachers develop attitudes and pedagogical coping mechanisms that lead to support for the anti-evolution movement.

The Racial Gap in Confidence in Science: Explanations and Implications

African Americans, compared to Whites, are starkly underrepresented in scientific and technological professions, are especially reluctant to participate as research subjects, and they express attitudes that are skeptical of science and scientific institutions. This article seeks to explain the racial gap in confidence in science (race being socially defined), putting to empirical test explanations suggested by research on human capital, inequality in educational opportunity, and culture. The results show that differential returns to schooling account for about a third of the racial divide, with various cultural mechanisms explaining most of the balance.

Teaching climate change in middle schools and high schools: investigating STEM education’s deficit model

Science teachers play an important role promoting civic scientific literacy, but recent research suggests they are less effective than they could be in educating the next generation of citizens about climate change and its causes. One particular area of concern is that many science teachers in the USA encourage students to debate settled empirical findings, such as the role of human-generated emissions of greenhouse gases in raising global temperatures. A common reaction is to call for science teachers to receive more formal training in climate science to increase their knowledge, which will then improve teaching. Using a nationally representative survey of 1500 middle school and high school science teachers, we investigate each element in this argument, and show that increased science coursework in college has modest effects on teachers’ content knowledge and on their teaching choices, including decisions about debating “both sides.” We also find that teachers’ personal political orientations play a large role in their teaching strategies: right-leaning teachers devote somewhat less time to global warming and are much more likely to encourage student debate on the causes of global warming. We discuss the implications of these findings and argue teacher education might be more effective if informed by insights from the emerging discipline of science communication. However, although knowledge and ideology are predictive of pedagogy, a large number of teachers of all ideological positions and all levels of subject expertise encourage students to debate established findings. We discuss this and highlight potential explanations.

Evolution, Creationism, and the Battle to Control America's Classrooms: Teachers and What They Teach

Who should decide what children are taught in school? This question lies at the heart of the evolution–creation wars that have become a regular feature of the U.S. political landscape. Michael Berkman and Eric Plutzer show that, since the 1925 Scopes “monkey trial,” many have argued that the people should decide by majority rule and through political institutions; others variously point to the federal courts, educational experts, or scientists as the ideal arbiters. Berkman and Plutzer illuminate who really controls the nation’s classrooms. Based on their innovative survey of 926 high school biology teachers, they show that the real power often lies with individual educators who make critical decisions in their own classrooms. Broad teacher discretion sometimes leads to excellent instruction in evolution. But the authors also find evidence of strong creationist tendencies in America’s public high schools and, more generally, a systematic undermining of science and the scientific method in many classrooms.

Teachers in Their Schools and Communities

There are worse things taught in our schools, and I will continue to support local control of education. New Hampshire Governor Stephen Merrill (1995) In the previous chapter, we showed how the individual characteristics of teachers help explain their varied approaches to teaching evolution and why some teachers are willing to cross the constitutional line by treating creationism as a scientific alternative to evolutionary biology. To a large extent, the analyses suggest that the type of learning opportunities afforded to each of the nations public school students is a chance event, based almost entirely on the particular teacher they encounter in their general biology class. But such an interpretation would not tell the entire story. And that is because teachers are not randomly distributed across classrooms, nor are they as immune to community influences as they are to state content standards. In this sense, it is again useful to think of teachers as street-level bureaucrats who are entrusted to implement state policy while also being afforded substantial autonomy commensurate with their positions as credentialed professionals. In Chapter 6, we assessed the extent to which teachers are responsive to state standards – official policies that are crafted by state policy makers. These policy makers include those directly elected by the people, as well as political appointees and civil servants who will reflect various degrees of responsiveness to public opinion. In this chapter, we shift our focus from this top–down conception of democratic control to a bottom–up model (Meier and O’Toole 2006) and assess their responsiveness to the communities they serve.