Gregor Mendel's classic paper and the nature of science in genetics courses

摘要

“One can no longer teach genetics only as genetics but must teach genetics also as a science. The reason for this is that our nation and the world seem to be pitted against an ever-increasing galaxy of problems that relate to our interactions with one another and with the natural world […] Whatever decisions are made depend on one's mode of thought and whether one thinks of today only or of the future as well.”John Moore 1986, p. 573These perceptive words of John Moore, a quarter of a century ago, concerning genetics courses and echoed more recently by Bruce Alberts, current Editor-in-Chief of the journal Science and past president of the Natural Academy of Sciences (NAS) in the United States, stress the need for undergraduate science courses that focus on the ‘nature of science and development of scientific knowledge’.“An objective analysis of a typical introductory science course in colleges and universities around the world […] would probably conclude that its purpose [goal] is to prepare students to ‘know, use and interpret scientific explanations of the natural world […] The other three goals of equal merit are to prepare students to generate and evaluate scientific evidence and explanations, to understand the nature and development of scientific knowledge, and to participate productively in scientific practices and discourse. Scientists would generally agree that all four types of science understanding are critical not only to a good science education but also to the basic education of everyone in the modern world. Why then do most science professors teach only the first one?”Bruce Alberts 2009Science curricula that include the nature and development of scientific knowledge (nature of science) exist in many countries worldwide. Examples of nature of science content are embedded in curricula in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Denmark and Spain (Matthews 1998, 2000). Science agencies in the United States, such as the NAS, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Research Council (NRC) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), have promoted reform in basic science courses to ensure that undergraduate students are better able to understand such complex scientific issues as climate change, world hunger, human diseases, rainforest depletion, overpopulation, evolution and pollution. Thereby, they may influence rational decisions about national policies. The NRC stresses that science courses should not only include science content, but also an “understanding of the nature and structure of scientific knowledge and the process by which it is developed.” (NRC 2007, p. 168). For teachers of genetics, it may be daunting to expand an already crowded course schedule. In our genetics courses, we discuss the nature of science in the context of Mendel. And, as this paper demonstrates, the time-honored lecture topic concerning the work of Gregor Mendel, can be quite useful in illustrating the “nature and development of scientific knowledge.”