Collaborative Research: Exploring How Undergraduate Learning of Multifactorial Genetics Affects Belief in Genetic Determinism

在NSF改善本科生STEM教育计划的支持下，该项目旨在通过研究如何以更具社会责任感的方式向本科生教授遗传学，服务于高质量STEM教学的国家利益。基因对于决定包括人类在内的生物的特征和特征非常重要。例如，基因对一个人的外表很重要，调节着身高、眼睛颜色和肤色等因素。基因在某些特征上也很重要，比如对特定疾病的易感性。然而，这些特征并不是简单地由单个基因单独作用造成的。相反，几乎所有的特征都是许多基因共同作用的结果，并与人的环境条件有关。由于许多因素可能会影响这些特征，科学家将其描述为多因素特征，或多因素遗传学。遗传决定论认为，人类的行为和特征主要或完全由基因决定，几乎不受任何其他因素的影响。尽管遗传学很早以前就否定了遗传决定论，但由于它与STEM教育中的种族和性别差异有关，对遗传决定论的信仰在社会上广泛存在，在教育上也存在问题。过高估计基因在塑造复杂人类特征中所起的作用会导致低估一个人的改变能力，因为这种能力的遗传基础被认为是不变的。当大学生相信个性是不会改变的时，他们可能会变得不太愿意面对那些因为种族或性别而刻板印象他人的人。当来自代表性不足群体的个人在STEM领域攻读本科课程时，他们自己或周围的人认为学术能力是遗传的，这可能会降低他们在这些课程中的成绩和在这些领域继续深造的动机。遗传学教育的最新研究表明，遗传学课程会影响学生对遗传决定论的信念。因此，了解对基因决定论的信念是如何随着本科生在遗传学课程中学到的内容而变化的，可以帮助教育工作者理解如何设计更好的遗传学教育-帮助学生在不增加基因决定论信念的情况下理解遗传遗传。这个项目将开发几个本科生遗传学教育干预措施，向学生传授各种遗传学概念。这些干预措施将通过多个本科课程的实验进行测试，以了解它们如何影响对基因决定论的信念、对人类特征可塑性的信念，以及研究STEM和对抗偏见的动机。通过将实验结果与探索大学生如何与干预材料进行推理的定性研究进行比较，本项目将发展关于遗传学教育中遗传决定论信念如何发展的新知识，以及如何重新设计遗传学课程以减少这种信念的流行。本项目将对多个机构的本科生进行三项大规模随机对照试验(RCT)，以探索学习特定基因组学概念的社会认知效应。这些随机对照试验将由认知有声思考访谈补充，这些访谈将探索本科生用来理解基因组学概念的特定领域的知识和经验。这项研究希望解决多因素遗传学教育在多大程度上影响大学生对遗传决定论、隐含的人的理论和学习科学的动机的信念。这项研究还希望确定哪些多因素概念对这些变量产生最大影响，以及哪些因素在多因素遗传学教育和对遗传决定论的信念之间的关系中起中介作用。更多的研究希望解决这些结果的重要性、重复性和稳健性。混合方法旨在促进对遗传学课程内容与对遗传决定论的信念之间的社会认知机制的理解，以及遗传学教育通过对大学生社会认知的影响来影响大学生STEM相关动机的程度。这些知识可能有助于大学生物学教师理解他们的遗传学课程如何影响代表人数不足的群体对STEM领域的兴趣。NSF改善本科生STEM教育计划支持旨在提高所有学生STEM教育有效性的项目。通过参与的学生学习路径，该计划支持有前景的实践和工具的创建、探索和实施。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

With support from the NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education Program, this project aims to serve the national interest in high quality STEM teaching by examining how to teach genetics to undergraduate students in a more socially responsible manner. Genes are important for determining the characteristics and features of living things, including humans. For example, genes are important in a person's physical appearance, regulating things such as height, eye color, and skin tone. Genes are also important in characteristics such as susceptibility to particular diseases. However, such characteristics are not simply caused by a single gene working alone. Instead, almost all characteristics result from the effects of many genes working together and with conditions in the person's environment. Since many elements may influence such characteristics, scientists describe them as multifactorial traits, or multifactorial genetics. Genetic determinism is the idea that human actions and traits are caused primarily or exclusively by genes and are little influenced by anything else. Although the science of genetics long ago repudiated genetic determinism, belief in it is socially widespread and educationally problematic due to its relationship with racial and gender disparities in STEM education. Overestimation of the role that genes play in shaping complex human traits leads to an underestimation of a person’s abilities to change because the genetic basis of such abilities is believed to make them immutable. When undergraduates develop the belief that personality is unchangeable they can become less willing to confront individuals who stereotype others because of their race or gender. When individuals from underrepresented groups take undergraduate courses in STEM fields where they themselves or those around them believe that academic ability is inherited, it can decrease their grades in those courses and their motivations to pursue further education in those fields. Recent research in genetics education suggests that the genetics curriculum influences student belief in genetic determinism. Understanding how belief in genetic determinism changes in response to the content undergraduates learn in their genetics courses could therefore help educators understand how to design a better genetics education— one that helps students understand genetic inheritance without increasing gene-determinist beliefs. This project will develop several undergraduate genetics education interventions that teach students about a variety of genetics concepts. These interventions will be tested through experiments in multiple undergraduate courses to understand how they influence belief in genetic determinism, beliefs about the malleability of human traits, and motivations to study STEM and to confront prejudice. By comparing the results of the experiments with qualitative studies that explore how undergraduates reason with the intervention materials, this project will develop new knowledge about how belief in genetic determism develops during genetics education and how the genetics curriculum can be redesigned to reduce the prevalence of this belief.This project will conduct three large-scale randomized control trials (RCTs) with undergraduates at multiple institutions to explore the social-cognitive effects of learning about specific genomics concepts. These RCTs will be supplemented with cognitive think-aloud interviews that will explore the domain-specific knowledge and experiences that undergraduates use to make sense of genomics concepts. The study hopes to address to what extent multifactorial genetics education affects undergraduate beliefs in genetic determinism, implicit person theories, and the motivation to study science. The study also hopes to identify which multifactorial concepts produce the largest effect on these variables and which factors mediate the relationship between multifactorial genetics education and belief in genetic determinism. Additional studies hope to address the significance, reproducibility, and robustness of the results. The mixed-methods approach intends to advance understanding of the social-cognitive mechanisms linking the content of the genetics curriculum to belief in genetic determinsm and the extent to which genetics education influences undergraduates’ STEM-related motivations through its impacts on their social cognition. This knowledge may help college biology faculty understand how their genetics curriculum affects interest in STEM fields among underrepresented groups. THE NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education Program supports project to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.