Investigation of Students’ Alternative Conceptions of Terms and Processes of Gene Technology

Our study monitored students’ alternative conceptions about some fundamental terms and processes of gene technology. Novice secondary school 10th graders (144 in total) described their conceptions in an open questionnaire. Using inductive category development, we iteratively categorized their responses. We found 13 categories describing students’ conceptions. Common categories were allocated to more than one different term or process. Specific categories were found only in the context of explaining one term or process. Using the collected conceptions, we then developed a questionnaire, which we administered to monitor the students’ conceptual change during a hands-on approach in our outreach lab. Knowledge about these conceptions and their consideration within science teaching should be of value both for preservice teacher education and for professional development of in-service teachers. 1. Introduction Based on everyday experience, students have their own conceptions on different subjects of science education, and they bring these conceptions along to the classroom (e.g., [1]). Within the literature, there are many terms for students’ own conceptions, such as preconceptions [2], alternative conceptions [3], misconceptions [4], alternative frameworks [5], common-sense concepts [6], initial conceptions [7], or everyday conceptions [8]. Within this paper, we use alternative conceptions as a neutral term for labeling students’ conceptions. Students’ alternative conceptions are based on “personal experiences” [9, page 1158] and, especially in the area of genetics, are influenced by the students’ social environment [10]. Often they differ from “those generally accepted by the scientific community” [11, page 159]. This discrepancy may prevent students from understanding a taught scientific concept. Thus, students must change their alternative conceptions and reconstruct their knowledge towards the new “to-be-learned” conception [7, page 27], within genetics education especially by using reasoning processes [12]. The consideration of students’ alternative conceptions within teaching is a prerequisite for such a conceptual change [13, 14]. The acceptance of a to-be-learned scientific conception seems only possible when existing individual alternative conceptions and scientific ones are simultaneously acknowledged in order to prompt a cognitive conflict. To achieve this, Posner et al. [13] noted four conditions: (a) a currently held conception does not satisfy the learner; (b) any newly provided conception must be intelligible; (c) the learner must regard the