Search

Genetic determinism can be described as the attribution of the formation of traits to genes, where genes are ascribed more causal power than what scientific consensus suggests. Belief in genetic determinism is an educational problem because it contradicts scientific knowledge, and is a societal problem because it has the potential to foster intolerant attitudes such as racism and prejudice against sexual orientation. In this article, we begin by investigating the very nature of belief in genetic determinism. Then, we investigate whether knowledge of genetics and genomics is associated with beliefs in genetic determinism. Finally, we explore the extent to which social factors such as gender, education, and religiosity are associated with genetic determinism. Methodologically, we gathered and analyzed data on beliefs in genetic determinism, knowledge of genetics and genomics, and social variables using the "Public Understanding and Attitudes towards Genetics and Genomics" (PUGGS) instrument. Our analyses of PUGGS responses from a sample of Brazilian university freshmen undergraduates indicated that (1) belief in genetic determinism was best characterized as a construct built up by two dimensions or belief systems: beliefs concerning social traits and beliefs concerning biological traits; (2) levels of belief in genetic determination of social traits were low, which contradicts prior work; (3) associations between knowledge of genetics and genomics and levels of belief in genetic determinism were low; and (4) social factors such as age and religiosity had stronger associations with beliefs in genetic determinism than knowledge. Although our study design precludes causal inferences, our results raise questions about whether enhancing genetic literacy will decrease or prevent beliefs in genetic determinism.

Teachers' professional development is a key factor in improving science education, but it shows limited impact when only a small number of teachers is reached, or when it focuses on only one aspect of teachers' development, such as learning science content, and is disconnected from teachers' practice. In order to increase the impact of our work on teachers' professional development, we implemented in 2007 ComPratica, an online network intended to establish a virtual community of practice involving biology teachers and biological education researchers. We present here the results of the first 2 years of this project, obtained through an analysis of the number and distribution of actions performed by the participants in the community, the kinds of activities in which they are engaged, and the themes addressed in their messages. From these data, we conclude that ComPratica is effectively functioning as a community of practice and is leading to changes related to both teachers' and researchers' professional development, which seem capable of reducing the research-practice gap in science education.

In this paper we discuss the results of an investigation aiming at mapping the conceptions of nature of protestant biology preservice teachers in a Brazilian university, State University of Feira de Santana, and elucidating their strategies to manage the coexistence of scientific and religious knowledge. We employ naturalistic semi-structured interviews about conceptualizations of nature to build first person interpretive narratives, which allow us to build a general characterization of the students' conceptualizations of nature and science, as well as strategies to deal with the coexistence of religious and scientific knowledge. We use students' personal statements to construct a general description of their religious and scientific upbringing. They are divided in two groups: (a) those with more scientifically compatible worldviews, who often make use of scientific ideas in their narratives about nature and build syntheses between scientific explanatory models and their religious worldviews; and (b) those who do not show evidence of meaningful learning of scientific ideas and are largely inclined to deliberately repudiate scientific knowledge. Our results show the complexity of the relationships between religious and scientific education in the trajectories of these preservice biology teachers.