In contrast, A Framework for K–12 Science Education ( NRC 2012) and the Next Generation Science Standards ( NGSS Lead States 2013) place new emphasis-starting in middle school life science-on the central role of proteins in bringing about traits. However, knowing that genes provide instructions for making proteins and that proteins have many functions that ultimately give rise to physical traits is a powerful and generative understanding that can explain a plethora of genetic phenomena ( Allchin 2002).Ĭurrent instructional practices tend to gloss over the causal mechanisms that link genes to traits ( Duncan, Rogat, and Yarden 2009 Pavlova and Kreher 2013) in favor of an approach focused on patterns of correlations between genes and traits, namely dominant and recessive inheritance. In addition, the notion that genetic information merely specifies the structure (and consequently the function) of proteins is rather counterintuitive to children ( Lewis and Kattmann 2004). This is in part because genetic phenomena span multiple organizational levels, many of which are invisible (e.g., cells, molecules) and arise from the behavior of entities unfamiliar to students (e.g., genes, proteins). Genetics, a core topic of biology in both middle and high school, is difficult to teach and learn ( Duncan et al.
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