Abstract
Genetics is the cornerstone of modern biology and understanding genetics is a critical aspect of scientific literacy. Research has shown, however, that many high school graduates lack fundamental understandings in genetics necessary to make informed decisions or to participate in public debates over emerging technologies in molecular genetics. Currently, much of genetics instruction occurs at the high school level. However, recent policy reports suggest that we may need to begin introducing aspects of core concepts in earlier grades and to successively develop students’ understandings of these concepts in subsequent grades. Given the paucity of research about genetics learning at the middle school level, we know very little about what students in earlier grades are capable of reasoning about in this domain. In this paper, we discuss a research study aimed at fostering deeper understandings of molecular genetics at the middle school level. As part of the research we designed a two-week model-based inquiry unit implemented in two 7th grade classrooms (
N
= 135). We describe our instructional design and report results based on analysis of pre/post assessments and written artifacts of the unit. Our findings suggest that middle school students can develop: (a) a view of genes as productive instructions for proteins, (b) an understanding of the role of proteins in mediating genetic effects, and (c) can use this knowledge to reason about a novel genetic phenomena. However, there were significant differences in the learning gains in both classrooms and we provide speculative explanations of what may have caused these differences.