From Basic to Humane Genomics Literacy
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From Basic to Humane Genomics Literacy How Different Types of Genetics Curricula Could Influence Anti-Essentialist Understandings of Race Brian M. Donovan 1 & Monica Weindling 1 & Dennis M. Lee 1 Accepted: 12 October 2020 / Published online: 17 November 2020 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract
Genetic essentialism of race is the belief that racial groups have different underlying genetic essences which cause them to differ physically, cognitively, or behaviorally. Apparently, no published studies have explored if belief in genetic essentialism of race among adolescents differs after many weeks of formal instruction about different domains of genetics knowledge. Nor have any studies explored if such differences reflect a coherent change in students’ racial beliefs. We use a quasi-experimental design (N = 254 students in 7th–12th grade) to explore these gaps. Over the course of 3 months, we compared students who learned from a curriculum on multifactorial inheritance and genetic ancestry to students who learned from their business as usual (BAU) genetics curriculum that discussed Mendelian and molecular genetics without any reference to race, multifactorial genetics, or genetic ancestry. Relative to the BAU condition, classrooms that learned from the multifactorial genetics and ancestry curriculum grew significantly more in their knowledge of multifactorial genetics and decreased significantly more in their genetic essentialist perceptions, attributions, and beliefs. From a conceptual change perspective, these findings suggest that classrooms using a curriculum emphasizing genetic complexity are more likely to shift toward a coherent anti-essentialist understanding of racial difference.
1 Introduction Genetic knowledge is used in sociopolitical debates about racial inequality in order to maintain or mitigate against structures that perpetuate oppression (Jackson Jr. and Depew 2017). These debates boil down to assumptions that are made about the nature of race (Morning 2011), and a growing body of research in science education demonstrates that school biology can affect the content of these assumptions, for better (Donovan et al. 2019a, b, 2020), or worse (Donovan
* Brian M. Donovan [email protected]
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BSCS Science Learning, 5415 Mark Dabling Blvd, Colorado Springs, CO 80918, USA
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B. M. Donovan et al.
2014, 2015, 2016, 2017). Specifically, this research has shown that belief in genetic essentialism—a cognitive form of prejudice—can be perpetuated or prevented by what is taught about race in genetics education (Donovan 2014, 2016, 2017; Donovan et al. 2019a). Estimates suggest that 20% of non-black US citizens believe in genetic essentialism of race (Morning et al. 2019). Psychologists (e.g. Dar-Nimrod and Heine 2011) define genetic essentialism as the belief that people of the same race share some set of genes that make them physically, cognitively, and behaviorally uniform, but different from other races. Consequently, genetic essentialists believe that complex traits are influenced little by the social
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