Innovative Genetics Exercise

• Relies on constructivist learning theory– Students need opportunities to develop their

own understanding of science– Students learn best when the instructor serves

as facilitator rather than disseminator– Students should engage in science for its

process (discovering scientific principles while collaborating with peers) rather than its products (getting the right answer)

Women’s Science: Learning and Succeeding from the Margins,1998 Ch3 Margaret Eisenhart and Elizabeth Finkle, pp 61-90

Innovative Genetics Exercise

• Students experienced the process of developing, presenting and revising models.– Students applied and learned this skill by practicing in

familiar contexts, like modeling the outcomes of five different cookie recipes

– Students compared cookie appearance (phenotypes) with cookie recipes (genotypes) in order to understand the influence of inheritance (ingredients) versus environment (baking temp/time).

– Students then created a simple model of dominance based on Gregor Mendel’s 1865 paper describing his work with pea plants.

Women’s Science: Learning and Succeeding from the Margins,1998 Ch3 Margaret Eisenhart and Elizabeth Finkle, pp 61-90

Innovative Genetics Exercise

• Students applied their simple model of dominance.– Students applied their dominance model to simple,

computer-generated organisms– The model works well in some cases and does not work

in others– In order to explain more complex inheritance

phenomena exhibited by the computer model, students develop new, more complex models

– Selected models are presented to the class, and used to predict outcomes of the computer simulation

– Students continued to revise models to account for increasingly complex simulations.

Women’s Science: Learning and Succeeding from the Margins,1998 Ch3 Margaret Eisenhart and Elizabeth Finkle, pp 61-90

Innovative Genetics Exercise

• Final results– Students (men and women) who has succeeded in

previous science courses tended to do better.

– Men who did not succeed in previous science courses also tended to do better.

– Women who did not succeed in previous science courses did not improve in this course.

– The hypothesis for the lack of improvement of certain men and women is that these students resisted identifying with scientists, and thus resisted behaving like scientists.

Women’s Science: Learning and Succeeding from the Margins,1998 Ch3 Margaret Eisenhart and Elizabeth Finkle, pp 61-90