Marie-Christine Knippels

Design Criteria for Learning and Teaching Genetics.

While learning and teaching difficulties in genetics have been abundantly explored and described, there has been less focus on the development and field-testing of strategies to address them. To inform the design of such a strategy a review study, focus group interviews with teachers, a case study of a traditional series of genetics lessons, student interviews, and content analysis of school genetics teaching were carried out. Specific difficulties reported in the literature were comparable to those perceived by Dutch teachers and found in the case study and the student interviews.The problems associated with the abstract and complex nature of genetics were studied in more detail. The separation of inheritance, reproduction and meiosis in the curriculum accounts for the abstract nature of genetics, while the different levels of biological organisation contribute to its complex nature. Finally, four design criteria are defined for a learning and teaching strategy to address these problems: linking the levels of organism, cell and molecule; explicitly connecting meiosis and inheritance; distinguishing the somatic and germ cell line in the context of the life cycle; and an active exploration of the relations between the levels of organisation by the students.

Education through Fiction: Acquiring Opinion-Forming Skills in the Context of Genomics.

The present study examined the outcomes of a newly designed four‐lesson science module on opinion‐forming in the context of genomics in upper secondary education. The lesson plan aims to foster 16‐year‐old students’ opinion‐forming skills in the context of genomics and to test the effect of the use of fiction in the module. The basic hypothesis tested in this study is whether fiction stimulates students to develop opinions with regard to socio‐scientific issues. A quasi‐experimental pre‐test and post‐test design was used, involving two treatment groups and one control group. One of the experimental groups received a science module incorporating movie clips (i.e., the movie group). The other experimental group received the same science module, but only news report clips were used (i.e., the news report group). Prior to and after the module, 266 secondary school students completed a questionnaire to test their opinion‐forming skills. The results demonstrate that the science module had a significant positive effect on students’ opinion‐forming skills and that the movie group improved their skills more compared with the news report group. It may be concluded that the use of fiction—to be more specific, movie clips about genomics extracted from feature films—to introduce a socio‐scientific issue in the classroom stimulates students to develop their opinion‐forming skills.

Effects of a science education module on attitudes towards modern biotechnology of secondary school students

This article evaluated the impact of a four‐lesson science module on the attitudes of secondary school students. This science module (on cancer and modern biotechnology) utilises several design principles, related to a social constructivist perspective on learning. The expectation was that the module would help students become more articulate in this particular field. In a quasi‐experimental design (experimental‐, control groups, and pre‐ and post‐tests), secondary school students’ attitudes (N = 365) towards modern biotechnology were measured by a questionnaire. Data were analysed using Chi‐square tests. Significant differences were obtained between the control and experimental conditions. Results showed that the science module had a significant effect on attitudes, although predominantly towards a more supportive and not towards a more critical stance. It is discussed that offering a science module of this kind can indeed encourage students to become more aware of modern biotechnology, although promoting a more critical attitude towards modern biotechnology should receive more attention.

Raising awareness of pre-symptomatic genetic testing

Presymptomatic genetic testing generates socioscientific issues in which decision making is complicated by several complexity factors.These factors include weighing of advantages and disadvantages, different interests of stakeholders, uncertainty of genetic information and conflicting values. Education preparing students for future decision making should address these factors. A research strategy is tested in which short video assisted cases are selected to illustrate the different perspectives on the issue of presymptomatic genetic testing in elite sport and the factors that make decision making complex. The cases contain narratives of real life situations in elite sport. After each case, students note their position and formulate arguments and questions. The strategy was tested in seven classes of pre-university education. Research shows that the strategy is effective in inviting students to consider different perspectives and to generate arguments and questions that cover the issue in a classroom discussion. The strategy requires little time and teacher preparation.

Recontextualising Cellular Respiration in Upper Secondary Biology Education. Characteristics and Practicability of a Learning and Teaching Strategy

Since concepts may have different meanings in different contexts, students have to learn to recontextualise them, i.e. to adapt their meanings to a new context. It is unclear, however, what characteristics a learning and teaching strategy for recontextualising should have. The study aims to develop such a learning and teaching strategy for cellular respiration. The strategy consists of a storyline, consisting of three contexts, with embedded cognitive elements and some episodes focussed on recontextualising cellular respiration. Testing the strategy in two classes in upper secondary biology education showed that the strategy was largely practicable.

The Theoretical Nature of Systems Thinking. Perspectives on Systems Thinking in Biology Education

Systems thinking has become synonymous to developing coherent understanding of complex biological processes and phenomena from the molecular level to the level of ecosystems. The importance of systems and systems models in science education has been widely recognized, as illustrated by its definition as crosscutting concept by the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS, 2013). However, there still seems no consensus on what systems thinking exactly implies or how it can be fostered by adequate learning and teaching strategies. This paper stresses the theoretical or abstract nature of systems thinking. Systems thinking is not just perceived here as ‘coherent understanding’, but as a learning strategy in which systems theoretical concepts are deliberately used to explain and predict natural phenomena. As such, we argue that systems thinking is not to be defined as a set of skills, that can be learned ‘one by one’, but instead asks for consideration of systems characteristics and the systems theories they are derived from. After a short elaboration of the conceptual nature of systems thinking, we portray the diversity of educational approaches to foster systems thinking that have been reported in the empirical literature. Our frame of analysis focuses on the extent to which attention has been given to the matching of natural phenomena to one of three systems theories, the integration of different systems thinking skills and the role of modelling. Subsequently, we discuss the epistemological nature of the systems concept and we present some conclusions on embedding systems thinking in the secondary biology curriculum.

Developing the Ability to Recontextualise Cellular Respiration: An Explorative Study in Recontextualising Biological Concepts.

ABSTRACT In many science education practices, students are expected to develop an understanding of scientific knowledge without being allowed a view of the practices and cultures that have developed and use this knowledge. Therefore, students should be allowed to develop scientific concepts in relation to the contexts in which those concepts are used. Since many concepts are used in a variety of contexts, students need to be able to recontextualise and transfer their understanding of a concept from one context to another. This study aims to develop a learning and teaching strategy for recontextualising cellular respiration. This article focuses on students’ ability to recontextualise cellular respiration. The strategy allowed students to develop their understanding of cellular respiration by exploring its use and meaning in different contexts. A pre- and post-test design was used to test students’ understanding of cellular respiration. The results indicate that while students did develop an acceptable understanding of cellular respiration, they still had difficulty with recontextualising the concept to other contexts. Possible explanations for this ack of understanding are students’ familiarity with the biological object of focus in a context, the manner in which this object is used in a context and students’ understanding of specific elements of cellular respiration during the lessons. Although students did develop an adequate understanding of the concept, they do need more opportunities to practice recontextualising the concept in different contexts. Further research should focus on improving the strategy presented here and developing strategies for other core concepts in science.

Nitric oxide production by macrophages stimulated by antigen-binding T-cell factors

Contact sensitivity to small molecular weight compounds is accompanied by the production of antigen-specific T-cell factors (TCF) shortly after skin application of the sensitizing agents. In this study, we show that macrophages can be activated by these TCF to generate large amounts of nitric oxide (NO). Incubation of the murine macrophage cell line J774 for 24 h with TCF raised against dinitrofluorobenzene (DNFB) or picryl chloride (PCL) resulted in a nitrite accumulation in the culture medium. Priming of J774 with rIFN-gamma synergistically enhanced stimulation of NO synthesis by DNFB-F and PCL-F. A possible contribution of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) as a contaminant of the TCF was excluded. The enhanced production of NO after stimulation with TCF was accompanied with an increased expression of inducible NO synthase. Inclusion of inhibitors of protein tyrosine kinase and protein kinase C inhibited the TCF-induced NO production by macrophages, indicating the involvement of both protein kinases in the signaling pathway activated by TCF. Since NO is an important biological mediator with many immunoregulatory properties, our results suggest a potential role for increased NO production by macrophages in the elicitation of contact sensitivity to small molecular weight compounds.