Students tend to learn genetics by rote and may not realise the interrelationships in daily life. Because reasoning abilities are necessary to construct relationships between concepts and rote learning impedes the students' sound understanding, it was predicted that having high level of formal reasoning and adopting meaningful learning…

Introducing research in undergraduate biology studies may contribute to creating research vocations and generate the idea that science may influence all aspects of common life. However, laboratory practices are too often disconnected from current investigations and rarely address real-life questions that are really interesting for students.…

Genomics and proteomics projects have produced a huge amount of raw biological data including DNA and protein sequences. Although these data have been stored in data banks, their evaluation is strictly dependent on bioinformatics tools. These tools have been developed by multidisciplinary experts for fast and robust analysis of biological data.…

Acquisition of scientific reasoning is one of the big challenges in education. A popular educational strategy advocated for acquiring deep knowledge is inquiry-based learning, which is driven by emerging "good questions". This study will address the question: "Which design features allow learners to refine questions while preserving…

To understand genetics, students need to be able to explain and draw connections between a large number of concepts. The purpose of the study reported herein was to explore the way upper secondary science students reason about concepts in molecular genetics in order to understand protein synthesis. Data were collected by group interviews. Concept…

Guided instruction is an approach that fully explains the concepts and procedures that students are required to learn. It seems intuitive that this approach should increase student learning; however, there is evidence in the literature that this may not always be the case. We wanted to assess the effectiveness of our own repeated…

We present a case study of a lesson that incorporates high school students' interests in heredity alongside the requirements of the curriculum. This was done by collecting students' questions in advance and inserting them in strategic places in the biology curriculum, thus creating a "shadow curriculum". The idea underlying the lesson plan is not…

A simple and cheap laboratory class is proposed to illustrate the lethal effect of UV radiation on bacteria and the operation of different DNA repair mechanisms. The class is divided into two sessions, an initial 3-hour experimental session and a second 2-hour analytical session. The experimental session involves two separate experiments: one…

Innatism is the belief that most of the human personality can be determined by genes. This ideology is dangerous, especially when it claims to be scientific. The present study investigates conceptions of 1060 students from Estonia and France related to genetic determinism of some human behaviours. Factors taken into account included students'…

This article describes how inquiry teaching can be directed towards specific content learning goals while allowing for student exploration and validation of hypotheses. Drawing from the Theory of Didactical Situations, the concepts of "milieu" and "validation" are illustrated through two sample biology lessons designed to engage and challenge…

We developed laboratory exercises using zebrafish ("Danio rerio") and nematodes ("Caenorhabditis elegans") for a sophomore-level Integrative Biology Laboratory course. Students examined live wildtype zebrafish at different stages of development and noted shifts occurring in response to "fgf8a" deficiency. Students were introduced to development in…

We examined selected situational emotions (interest, well-being and anxiety) experienced by 291 secondary school tenth graders during a hands-on gene technology lesson. Two different instruction groups (I-1, I-2) participated in the same teaching unit, in which four basic gene technology experiments were performed. Using a modified "constructivist…

Mating between closely related individuals often causes reduced fitness, which is termed "inbreeding depression". Inbreeding is, therefore, a threat towards the persistence of animal and plant populations. Here we present methods and results from a practical for high-school and first-year university students and discuss learning outcomes of the…

A phylogenetics exercise is incorporated into the "Introduction to biocomputing" course, a junior-level course at Savannah State University. This exercise is designed to help students learn important concepts and practical skills in molecular phylogenetics through solving a real-world problem. In this application, students are required to identify…

We describe the development of a mini-library of human DNA fragments for use in an enquiry-based learning (EBL) undergraduate practical incorporating "wet-lab" and bioinformatics tasks. In spite of the widespread emergence of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), the cloning and analysis of DNA fragments in "Escherichia coli" remains a fundamental…