Teachers’ choice of content and consideration of controversial and sensitive issues in teaching of secondary school genetics (original) (raw)

Science education strives to increase interest in science and facilitate active citizenship. Thus, the aspects of personal and societal relevance are increasingly emphasised in science curricula. Still, little is known about how teachers choose content for their teaching, although their choices translate curricula to teaching practice. We explored how teachers choose genetics content and contexts for biology courses on cells, heredity and biotechnology by interviewing ten Finnish upper-secondary school teachers. We specifically studied how the teachers described teaching on genetically modified organisms, hereditary disorders, and complex human traits as teachers have different amounts of freedom afforded by curricula in choosing contents and contexts on these themes. We analysed interviews with theory-guiding content analysis and found consistent patterns in teachers' perceptions of the main themes in genetics teaching, teacher inclinations towards teaching genetics in human context and perceptions of students' interest in different topics. These patterns, which we call emphasis of content in genetics teaching could be classified to Developmental, Structural and Hereditary. Teachers with Developmental emphasis embraced teaching genetics in a human context, while teachers with a Structural emphasis avoided them. In general, teachers justified their choices by national, local school, and personal factors. While teachers mentioned that societal and personal contexts are important, at the same time teachers never framed the main themes in genetics with these contexts. We conclude that how teachers handle issues of societal or personal relevance should be emphasized.