1. Giving the boot to Mendel
Improving genetics curriculum in high school
Tuomas Aivelo
University of Helsinki
26.11.2012

2. Genetic literacy

What are the central contents?

What should students know?

Contemporary conception of scientific literacy
– Abilities to be active citizen
– Understanding of culture
– Appreciation of science

This includes eg.:
– Nature of science
– Sosioscientific issues

3. Current use of genomics

Rise of personal genomics – eg. 23AndMe

Whole-genome sequencing

Typical science news:

4. Current canon of genetics teaching

Heavily towards
Mendelian inheritance

Central themes
– Dominance
– Monohybrid crosses
– Complete
penetrance

The renewal process
for curriculum is just
starting!

5. Suggested problems

Genetical determinism

”Transmission genetics”

No idea of real relationship between
dominance/recessiveness

No appreciation for different uses of 'genes'

Is it useful?

6. Gene – what it is?

Gene means different things in different fields
of biology!

Gene-P:
– Gene as an information unit - “gene for”

Gene-D:
– Gene as a developmental unit - “gene as”

7. Research questions

Do high school students have ideas of genetical
determinism?

Do high school students understand how
dominance and recessiveness actuall happen?

What kind of picture commonly used textbooks
give on these two issues?

8. My methods

National Biology Competition

>1000 answers expected

multiple-choice questions

Analysis of biology textbooks

Two most common books used in 90% of classes

9. Text book analysis

Identifying passages which talk
about genes, inheritance and
genotype-to-phenotype
relation

What kind of understanding of
'gene'?

What kind of stance on
– Dominance
– Determinism

10. Identifying genetic literacy

Underlying mission is to design genetic literacy
requirements needed for Finnish high school
students:
– First step is to identify how well current
curriculum works and how learning is lacking
and which potential misconceptions are being
taught

Workshop in March in Utrecht, Netherlands for
global input and synthesis