BIOTECHNOLOGIES AS A CONTEXT FOR ENHANCING STUDENTS ABILITY TO ASK MEANINGFUL QUESTIONS ABOUT...

BIOTECHNOLOGIES AS A CONTEXT FOR ENHANCING STUDENTS ABILITY TO ASK MEANINGFUL QUESTIONS

ABOUT ABSTRACT BIOLOGICAL PROCESSES

BIOTECHNOLOGIES AS A CONTEXT FOR ENHANCING STUDENTS ABILITY TO ASK MEANINGFUL QUESTIONS

ABOUT ABSTRACT BIOLOGICAL PROCESSES

Dr. GILA OLSHER

E-mail: [email protected]

RONIT YEDIDSION


Beit berl college, school of education, doar beit berl 44905, Israel

Dr. GILA OLSHER


RONIT YEDIDSION


Beit berl college, school of education, doar beit berl 44905, Israel

Copyright: by Dr Gila Olsher

conclusion

Questions concerning the NATURE OF

PROCESS INSIDETHE BLACK BOXQuestions concerning the

SOCIAL ASPECTS OFMODERN TECHNOLOGY

“OSTENTION”Showing

MACRO-LEVEL

CONCRETEOUTCOMES

A MICRO-LEVEL PROCESS

NOT USABLE AS A BASIS FOR

UNDERSTANDING

HUMANINTERVENTION

INTERVENINGFACTORS

THE

BIOTECHNOLOG

Y

“BLACK BOX”


THE BIOTECHNOLOGY (A MICRO-LEVEL

PROCESS)

BACTERIA

AND

MILK

“Are the bacteria in sour milk dangerous to human beings?”

“OSTENTION”

Showing(HUMAN

INTERVENTION)

A KINDOF

BACTERIA

(INTERVENINGFACTORS)

TEMPERATURE

(MACRO

-LEVEL)

yogurt

Examples of Questions

“The Milky Way”


THE BIOTECHNOLOGY (A MICRO-LEVEL

PROCESS)

BACTERIA

Enzymes’ proteins

AND

HUMAN GENS

When we take a drug, is it an intervention in our body ”?

“OSTENTION”

Showing(HUMAN

INTERVENTION) Micro-organisms

(INTERVENING

FACTORS) Human gene:

Growth Hormone

(MACRO

-LEVEL)

GROWTHHORMONE

Examples of Questions

“Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering”


THE BIOTECHNOLOGY

(A MICRO-LEVEL

PROCESS) Single-cell

fungi

+

Food substrate

“Could protein from fungi be dangerous to human beings”?“ Why do we need to produce proteins from fungi”?

“OSTENTION”

Showing(HUMANINTERVENTION)

Single-cell fungi growing on Inexpensive

food substrate

(INTERVENINGFACTORS)

Temperature

Ph

(MACRO

-LEVEL)

Rich- Proteins

food

Examples of questions

“Single-Cell Protein”


Biotechnology

They are called biotechnologies, because they exploit the capacity of various living organisms to synthesize products which are useful to humankind )Bull, 1982; Marx, 1989).


OstensionMillar )1990( proposes the teaching or “presentation” of scientific principles by “ostention”, which means, literally, by “showing”. He claims that the teaching method, instead of dealing with proofs for the existence of any abstract theory based on the molecular level, should show the “theory in action”.

The main hypothesis of this study is that the “ostention” approach may offer a solution to the everlasting conflict between, on one hand, the necessity, as mentioned above, to teach meaningfully some concepts the young students must be supplied with, as an essential part of their scientific literacy, and on the other hand, the apparent impossibility to do so, because the students lack the necessary scientific background. Copyright: by Dr Gila Olsher

“theory in action”

By showing these processes “in action”, the teaching method can bring the students to a state where they can ask meaningful questions, raise meaningful problems and understand answers concerning the nature of events which “must have occurred” in the black box, and their importance to the living organism. This is the heart of the matter: when the “ostention” approach is used in the context of biotechnologies, meaningful learning of biological processes may result in the generation of questions, or hypotheses, about the biological function and implications of observed phenomena, and not anymore to the learning of esoteric biochemical details. Copyright: by Dr Gila Olsher

The modules

Three modules were developed, each of them describing a human intervention into an important natural process, and its outcomes. All the modules were designed along the same pattern. the three modules called:

“The Milky Way”




The first module:

The Milky Way

“The Milky Way”, is a type of traditional, “cottage industry” intervention, that has been known for hundreds of years and does not require any sophisticated equipment: the production of yogurt. In this module, the students could and did perform simple experiments.


The technology involved in the second module, was, by contrast, extremely modern.

The students were confronted with a problem of a medical type: children with growth hormone deficiency. This module emphasized value-laden social and moral issues.

second module:



The third module,“Single-Cell Protein”, belonged to the domain of the industrial – not the agricultural -- production of food: the production of rich-protein food using single-cell fungi, which, when growing on an inexpensive food substrate, convert it into proteins of high biological value. The module stressed important economic and social issues.

The third module:



Category A: Questions Not related to the contents of the black-box

Category B: Questions which were directly related to the contents of the black-box:

Category C: These questions were relevant to the process and deal with its human and social aspects of the uses of biotechnologies.

The main categories of the questions asked by the

students

In this presentation we are dealing only with questions from the three modules which refer to categories B and C specifically.


1. “What do bacteria eat, the sugar?”

2. “Which matter do the bacteria utilize in the milk?”

3. “Are the bacteria which make the milk sour specific to milk?”

4. “Are bacteria able to break down proteins?”

5. “Is the process of souring the milk useful to the bacteria?”

6. “Why is it that different methods yield different tastes?”

7. “When does the process stop? By itself or do we insert bacteria which stop the other bacteria?”

8. “Why does the milk become sour outside and not in the refrigerator?”.

Questions from the “Milky way” activity:

Questions from the “genetic engineering” activity:

1. “Why is it impossible to insert the genetic code into a man, when it can be done with bacteria?”

2. “How does it happen that a man does not produce a certain hormone?”

3. “How are desirable traits transmitted from generation to generation?”.


1. “Why do fungi produce rich proteins?”

2. “How is it possible that a small primitive being as a micro-organism makes a richer protein than men?”

3. “Is the rich protein produced by the fungi an excretion, or is it the matter which builds their body?”

4. “How long is a generation of fungi?”

5. “If there is an increment in the mass of fungi, where does the new matter come from?”

Questions from the “single-cell protein” activity :


conclusion

A main achievement of this study was to expose student teachers to the unusual teaching strategy of questioning which enables junior high school students to overcome the understanding gap of abstract Micro level biological processes.

It is clear that, given the rudimentary knowledge of the junior high school students of micro-biology or biochemistry, the number of questions that could be asked in the category described above as “black box” was limited )Olsher & Dreyfus 1999(. It is natural that the students should ask more questions in the social category. Even few meaningful questions in the black box category represent a tangible achievement.


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