Genetics concepts is taught at secondary school to equip students with relevant knowledge to engage with related socio-scientific issues in order to make a reasonable decision. However, earlier research shown that students exhibited poor comprehension of this concept. Despite several interventions, this problem persists. This study was designed to…

It is 157 years since Mendel presented his results on hybridisation in peas to the Brünn Society for Natural Science. The discipline of genetics has dramatically changed since then, with technological advancements revealing multifactorial causation and trait variability. Whilst none of this complexity featured in the discovery of classical…

This paper examines the genetic ("nature") and environmental ("nurture") influences on why students vary in their reading skills. We review core findings from the field of modern behavioral genetics, a discipline that studies the interplay of genetic and environmental influences, on reading science. Additionally, we provide an…

Purpose: Language studies on populations with rare genetic disorders are limited. Hence, there is little data on commonly found or expected developmental linguistic traits and cognitive mechanisms that may be impaired. Based on the hypothesis that there is a close connection between language and cognition and the relevance of specific genetic…

Many students majoring in biology education at university find genetics as a quite complicated and difficult subject. A reflective journal has been used widely in teacher education to improve students' performance. This study aims to describe the role of the reflective journals for biology education students ina genetics course. The subjects in…

Biology education research has shown that deeply rooted intuitions can influence students' understanding of biological phenomena. One example is design teleology, the intuition that organisms' traits were designed to fulfill a goal. Another example is psychological essentialism, the intuition that organisms have fixed essences. Past research has…

Understanding genetics, an important topic in the study of biology, is critical for scientific literacy in agriculture, health, and forensic investigations. However, it has been observed that teachers find genetics difficult to teach and pupils do not perform well in it. Teachers can use expository teaching or active learning methods, but the…

Progress in precision medicine is being achieved through the design of clinical trials that use genetic biomarkers to guide stratification of patients and assignation to treatment or control groups. Genetic analysis of biomarkers is, therefore, essential to complete their objectives, and this involves the study of biological samples from donor…

Neighborhood is a key context where children learn to process social information; however, the field has largely overlooked the ways children's individual characteristics might be moderated by neighborhood effects. We examined 1,030 six- to 11-year-olds (48.7% female; 82% White) twin pairs oversampled for neighborhood disadvantage from the Twin…

This study explored the use of an innovative instructional approach called Productive Failure (PF) to design an educational game and its support. The study then examined the effects of two different types of instruction--PF vs. Direct Instruction (DI)--on learning genetics and relevant mathematical knowledge in a Game-Based Learning (GBL)…

With the better understanding of human genome and genetic contributions to human complex diseases, more and more clinical genetic tests have been developed for the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of human diseases. This has raised new challenges to classroom teaching of medical genetics (MG) in medical education of undergraduates, who are…

The use of digital technologies in teaching and learning has proven to be effective in aiding students' understanding of difficult concepts. Hence this study sought to find the effectiveness of ICT in teaching concepts of genetics which have been indicated as one of the biology concepts Ghanaian senior high school students find challenging. The…

Genetic variation is historically challenging for undergraduate students to master, potentially due to its grounding in both evolution and genetics. Traditionally, student expertise in genetic variation has been evaluated using Key Concepts. However, Cognitive Construals may add to a more nuanced picture of students' developing expertise. Here, we…

This article presents the integration of Tinkercad, a free online modeling program that allows students to model molecular genetic concepts, into the distance learning process. The students had the opportunity to learn molecular genetics in a fun and more efficient way in spite of the limitations of the COVID-19 lockdown, and, in this respect, it…

The teaching of genetics has not been effective in promoting a scientifically acceptable understanding of basic genetics concepts. This study addresses that gap by reporting on topic-specific pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) enacted by a teacher educator as she teaches a content course on basic genetics concepts to fourth-year pre-service…