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http://dx.doi.org/10.14697/jkase.2014.34.4.0407

Teachers' Conceptions about the Genetic Determinism of Human Behaviors  

Youn, Se Jin (Pusan National University)
Seo, Hae-Ae (Pusan National University)
Publication Information
Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education / v.34, no.4, 2014 , pp. 407-415 More about this Journal
Abstract
Genetic determinism of human behaviors is considered as a philosophical perspective that genes in humans determine biological as well as social traits. However, many biologists agree that human traits are determined by interactions between genes and genes, as well as between genes and environments. In this context, genetic determinism still affect ideas of the general public as well as research directions of biologists. According to Cl$\acute{e}$ment's KVP model (Cast$\acute{e}$ra & Cl$\acute{e}$ment, 2012), teachers' conceptions of genetic determinism influence students' concepts of genetics. This study intends to investigate teachers' conceptions on genetic determinism of human behaviors. For this end, a questionnaire adopted from a previous research (Cast$\acute{e}$ra & Cl$\acute{e}$ment, 2012) has been administered to 308 teachers including 151 pre-service and 157 in-service. Factor analysis has been conducted to extract major factors and one-way ANOVA has been employed to find out differences in extracted factors among different groups of teachers. Four factors have been extracted from 14 items of questionnaire, including factor 1, a perspective of genetic determinism of gender differences in intellectual ability, social status, and emotional traits; factor 2, a perspective of genetic determinism of individual differences in intellectual ability; factor 3, a perspective of genetic determinism of individual differences in biological immune function and behavioral trait; and factor 4, a perspective of genetic determinism of ethnic differences. From the results of One-way ANOVA among teacher groups on four factors, first, it has shown a significant difference in factor 1 (F=3.325, p=.006), factor 3 (F=3.320, p=.006) and factor 4 (F=4.325, p=.001) due to their subject matters. In post-hoc comparison there have been no significant difference between biology teachers and other teachers. It has also been found that there was a significant difference between pre-service and in-service teachers in factor 1 (t=-3.938, p=.000) and factor 4 (t=-3.121, p=.002) and in-service teachers are more genetic deterministic than pre-service teachers. Finally, different religions have no influence on teachers' conceptions of genetic determinism of human behaviors.
Keywords
genetic determinism; teachers' conceptions; reductionism; KVP model;
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