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Recent research suggests a relationship between understanding of macroevolutionary principles (such as phylogenetics) and acceptance of evolution in biology majors. The purpose of this study was to quantitatively investigate the relationship between ability to interpret phylogenetic trees (tree thinking) and acceptance of evolutionary theory for 92 university non-science majors before and after a general education biology course. We found that the majority of students taking the course held strong religious affiliations but were still open to having their mind changed and accepted evolution as a valid scientific theory. Students started and ended the course with a relatively high acceptance of evolutionary theory, but the nature of their acceptance changed significantly and we documented several such shifts. Additionally, we found a significant increase in students’ tree thinking understanding after instruction and a slight, but significant, correlation between evolution acceptance and tree thinking understanding. Our investigation demonstrated that targeted evolution instruction using a tree thinking approach may alter students’ acceptance of evolution, even if the students initially hold strong anti-evolution ideas. By learning how college students understand and develop ideas about evolution using a visual approach, we can better target areas of confusion and begin forming guidelines for effective evolution instruction.

People have preconceived notions about how the world works from personal experiences. When these notions are scientifically inaccurate they can encourage unintended learning outcomes. Thus assessing students’ prior knowledge is important, allowing instructors to target misconceptions and optimize learning. However, the structure/administration of pre-assessments can influence students’ achievement and potentially mask errors in understanding. We investigated the influence of pre-assessment task order on students’ tree thinking responses. We investigated student responses on a two-tiered pretest and an associated tree building task from 133 participants. Differences in the styles of student generated representations were significantly related to task order. This influence creates the challenge of diagnosing student ideas and facilitating conceptual change, while not accidentally provoking misconceptions in the process.