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

在美国国家科学基金会改善本科STEM教育计划的支持下，该项目旨在通过研究如何以更有社会责任感的方式向本科生教授遗传学，为高质量的STEM教学服务。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，它调节着身高、眼睛颜色和肤色等。基因在对特定疾病的易感性等特征中也很重要。然而，这些特征并不仅仅是由单个基因单独作用引起的。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。基因决定论认为，人类的行为和特征主要或完全由基因引起，几乎不受其他任何因素的影响。尽管遗传学很早以前就否定了遗传决定论，但由于其与STEM教育中的种族和性别差异的关系，对遗传决定论的信仰在社会上广泛存在，并在教育上存在问题。高估基因在塑造复杂人类特征中的作用，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可改变的。当大学生们培养了这样一种信念，即个性是不可改变的，他们就不太愿意面对那些因为种族或性别而对他人产生刻板印象的人。当来自代表性不足的群体的个人参加STEM领域的本科课程时，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他们在这些领域继续接受教育的动机。最近遗传学教育的研究表明，遗传学课程影响学生对遗传决定论的信念。因此，了解基因决定论的信念是如何随着本科生在遗传学课程中所学内容的变化而变化的，可以帮助教育工作者了解如何设计更好的遗传学教育——在不增加基因决定论信念的情况下，帮助学生理解基因遗传。本项目将开发几个本科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遗传决定论的信念，对人类特征可塑性的信念，以及学习STEM和面对偏见的动机。通过将实验结果与探索本科生如何使用干预材料进行推理的定性研究进行比较，本项目将开发关于遗传决定论信念在遗传教育中如何发展的新知识，以及如何重新设计遗传学课程以减少这种信念的流行。该项目将在多所院校的本科生中开展三次大规模随机对照试验（RCTs），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辅以认知思考访谈，这些访谈将探索本科生用于理解基因组学概念的特定领域知识和经验。本研究希望探讨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、内隐人格理论和学习科学动机的信念。该研究还希望确定哪些多因素概念对这些变量产生了最大的影响，哪些因素介导了多因素遗传学教育与基因决定论信仰之间的关系。更多的研究希望解决的重要性，可重复性和稳健性的结果。混合方法方法旨在促进对遗传学课程内容与遗传决定论信念之间联系的社会认知机制的理解，以及遗传学教育通过其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。这些知识可以帮助大学生物学教师了解他们的遗传学课程如何影响代表性不足的群体对STEM领域的兴趣。美国国家科学基金会改善本科STEM教育计划支持的项目旨在提高所有学生STEM教育的有效性。通过参与学生学习轨道，该计划支持有前途的实践和工具的创建，探索和实施。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.