Reducing Racially-Biased Beliefs by Fostering a Complex Understanding of Human Genetics Research in High-School Biology Students

项目来源

美国国家科学基金(NSF)

项目主持人

Brian Donovan

项目受资助机构

University of Colorado at Boulder

项目编号

2452096

财政年度

2025,2024,2021

立项时间

未公开

项目级别

国家级

研究期限

未知 / 未知

受资助金额

5334162.00美元

学科

未公开

学科代码

未公开

基金类别

Continuing grant

关键词

Discovery Research K-12

参与者

Dennis Lee

参与机构

THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO

项目标书摘要:Genetic essentialism is the belief that people of the same race share genes that make them physically,cognitively,and behaviorally uniform,and thus different from other races.The project will refine a genetics education curriculum,called Humane Genome Literacy(HGL),in order to reduce belief in genetic essentialism.This research will provide curriculum writers and educators with knowledge about how to design a humane genetics education to maximize reductions in students’genetic essentialist beliefs and minimize the threat of backfiring(unintentionally increasing belief in essentialism).The research findings will demonstrate how to support teachers who wish to reduce beliefs in genetic essentialism by teaching students about the complexity of human genetics research using the HGL learning materials.Project research findings,learning materials,and professional development institutes will be made available to educators and researchers across the country who desire to teach genetics to reduce racial prejudice.To prepare for the research,the project will revise and augment the project’s existing HGL curriculum and professional development institutes.In year one,the project will develop new versions of the HGL interventions.Using these materials,the project will train teachers to implement new versions of the HGL interventions in their classrooms.Researchers will video and audio record a sample of teachers and students as they learn.These data will be analyzed qualitatively to:(1)examine how the conceptual change of genetic essentialism was promoted or impeded by interactions between teachers,students,and the materials;and(2)identify and corroborate general factors undergirding the backfiring effect.Knowledge constructed through these studies will be used to revise the HGL interventions and PDIs.In year three,using the revised versions of the HGL intervention,the project will conduct a cluster randomized trial(CRT).The CRT will compare the HGL interventions to a well-defined“business as usual”genetics curriculum,using a statistically powerful and geographically diverse sample(N=135 teachers,N=16,200 students,from 33 states).Using data from the CRT,the project will identify classrooms where the interventions reduced essentialism,had no effect on it,and where it backfired.Then,the project will use stimulated recall methods to interview the teachers and students in those classrooms to make sense of factors that contributed to these outcomes.The project will use this information to develop the final version of the HGL interventions and PDI materials.By the end of year four,the project will have trained an additional 90-100 teachers to use HGL interventions,reaching an additional 10,800-12,000 students,in at least 33 different states.The Discovery Research preK-12 program(DRK-12)seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science,technology,engineering and mathematics(STEM)by preK-12 students and teachers,through research and development of innovative resources,models and tools.Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

人员信息

Brian Donovan(Principal Investigator):brian.donovan-1@colorado.edu;

机构信息

【University of Colorado at Boulder(Performance Institution)】StreetAddress:3100 MARINE ST,Boulder,Colorado,United States/ZipCode:803090001;【THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO】StreetAddress:3100 MARINE ST,Boulder,Colorado,United States/PhoneNumber:3034926221/ZipCode:803090001;

项目主管部门

Directorate for STEM Education(EDU)-Division of Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings(DRL)(DRL)

项目官员

Melisa J.Luna

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  • 1.Developing and Teaching Curriculum to Reduce Genetic Essentialism in University Classrooms.

    • 关键词:
    • Environmental variation; Genetic essentialism; Genetic variation; Humane Genetics Curriculum (HGC); University teaching
    • Malerbi, Kathryn Fiuza;Brubaker, Andrew;Weindling, Monica;Thompson, Katherine N;Habib, Christine Miriam;Jeong, Yeongmi;Donovan, Brian M;Wedow, Robbee
    • 《Behavior genetics》
    • 2026年
    • 期刊

    Genetic essentialism is a social-cognitive prejudice involving the belief that people of the same race share genes that make them behaviorally, physically, and cognitively uniform and also genetically distinct from other other races, despite the fact that race and ethnicity are socially constructed categories that lack any biological basis. It can be exacerbated by a basic, Mendelian-based genetics and biology education. To combat this phenomenon, the Humane Genomics Literacy (HGL) curriculum was developed and has been highly effective in both increasing students' understanding of genetics and reducing students' belief in genetic essentialism. In this article, we focus on how to teach the HGL curriculum in the classroom. We carefully describe the original HGL curriculum in terms of content and the unique pedagogical practices that the curriculum includes. Next, we discuss how to adapt the curriculum for the university classroom. In doing so, we allow readers to see inside the HGL curriculum for the first time and to gain a better understanding of how each instructional support and each conceptual understanding are built from lesson to lesson. We aim to provide a guide for genetics educators who are interested in using HGL in their own university classrooms. © 2026. The Author(s).

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