Classify students' conceptions about the mutation's site to anticipate their knowings' mobilization before designing an experimental procedure
Résumé
In high school, students have difficulties to understand and to learn genetics in general and DNA structure and mutations in particular. These difficulties are partly due to the different biological levels. Several studies showed that students have difficulties to differentiate these levels and that they are not able to order them in the right biological hierarchy. We studied students' conceptions on a specific question to get knowledge on their misunderstanding of these levels. To do that we asked students the following question: where (at what level) in the body, mutagen agents act. After a literature review, we defined six biological levels (organism, cell, nucleus, chromosome and DNA). Students were separated in three groups depending on whether they had studied the DNA structure and mutations or not (both notions, just the DNA structure or none). Analysis of students' productions confirmed our six predefined levels, but with an unequal distribution, some levels being ignored by students. Moreover, distributions were different for the different groups of students. The goal of this study is to know how students could mobilize their knowings about DNA and mutation, and use this knowledge to design a laboratory work session scaffolded by an intelligent learning environment.
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