Teachers’ Conceptions About the Genetic Determinism of Human Behaviour: A Survey in 23 Countries

Abstract

This work analyses the answers to a questionnaire from 8,285 in-service and pre-service teachers from 23 countries, elaborated by the Biohead-Citizen research project, to investigate teachers' conceptions related to the genetic determinism of human behaviour. A principal components analysis is used to assess the main trends in all the interviewed teachers' conceptions.This illustrates that innatism is present in two distinct ways: in relation to individuals (e.g. genetic determinism to justify intellectual likeness between individuals such as twins) or in relation to groups of humans (e.g. genetic determinism to justify the superiority of some human ethnic groups). A between-factor analysis discriminates between countries, showing very significant differences. There is more innatism among teachers' conceptions in African countries and Lebanon than in European countries, Brazil and Australia. Among the other controlled parameters, only two are significantly independent of the country: the level of training and the level of knowledge of biology. A co-inertia analysis shows a strong correlation between non-citizen attitudes towards and innatist conceptions of genetic determinism regarding human groups. We discuss these findings and their implications for education.

Exploring Relationships Among Belief in Genetic Determinism, Genetics Knowledge, and Social Factors

“…In contrast, students or family members who have tested positive for certain genetic markers, but have not developed the particular disease or trait, might think less deterministically about genetics. Finally, we included an item about participants' religiosity, as other empirical studies have suggested this is an important factor related to fatalism and genetic deterministic beliefs (i.e., Castéra and Clément 2014;Parrott et al 2004). …”

“…Hence, we can see that the Brazilian participants in our study seem to exhibit less genetic deterministic beliefs for social traits in comparison to the US participants in Morin-Chassé's study. Perhaps there are cultural differences explaining belief formation in the case of genetic deterministic views of social traits, as discussed by Castéra and Clément (2014). However, the participants in the study of Morin-Chassé were self-selected, and this could also explain the differences.…”

Genetic Determinism in the Genetics Curriculum

“…Aikenhead and Ryan 1992;Keller 2005;Castéra and Clément 2014). Having considered a number of existing instruments we found none that were entirely suitable for our purposes, being either too broad or too specific, or requiring data analysis beyond the statistical skills of our team.…”

Assessment of Genetics Understanding

“…While these have been included to varying extents within the molecular model of genetics (Stewart et al 2005;Duncan et al 2009;Todd and Romine 2016), students often struggle draw connections between Mendelian and molecular aspects of genetics (Lewis and Kattmann 2004;Todd and Romine 2016). From a pedagogical perspective, Mendelian-centric presentations of genetics have been associated with fueling students' tendency to accept the simplest explanation over more accurate but complex explanations for trait variant (Dougherty et al 2011;Gericke et al 2014;Jamieson and Radick 2013), feeding into existing confusion about the concept of dominance (Allchin 2005;Jamieson and Radick 2013), and promoting exaggerated deterministic perspectives on inheritance which can contribute to related social extensions of deterministic views (Gericke et al 2014;Castéra and Clément 2014;Castéra et al 2008;Jamieson and Radick 2013). Together, these concerns underpin the importance of research toward clearly delineating the place of Mendelian genetics within learning progressions and associated curricula.…”