UBC Reports | Vol. 47 | No. 06 | Mar.
22, 2001
Science educators transform the teaching of genetics
“Every educated person must have an understanding of genetics,”
says Botany Prof. Anthony Griffiths. Easier said than done.
In the early ’90s he lectured to 500 students in the compulsory
Biology 334 course and worried that too many were failing.
Enter Education Assoc. Prof. Jolie Mayer-Smith, who had earned
a PhD in Science before switching her focus to science education.
“We had talked about how to solve the problem and in the fall
of ’92 I began attending the lectures,” she recalls.
Lengthy periods of observation, discussion and analysis followed
as strategies and activities were developed with students, teaching
assistants, faculty and staff in collaborative study group meetings.
Nearly a decade later, their intense, ongoing partnership has
produced the landmark text, Understanding Genetics: Strategies
for Teachers and Learners in Universities and High Schools.
“In the past I did the teaching and students did the learning,”
says Griffiths, who describes himself as a convert to constructivism.
In simplified terms, constructivism is a way of thinking about
the formation of knowledge and understanding.
Learning involves construction of knowledge by students engaging
thoughtfully with information.
“Knowledge isn’t a commodity to be transferred,” explains Mayer-Smith.
“It’s a product of students processing and making connections between
new information received and knowledge previously constructed.”
“Prior knowledge and experiences are very important — they mediate
how students view, accept, process and construct new understanding,”
says Griffiths, who abandoned `mug and jug’ education when, among
other things, he concluded his biology students were confronting
complex data analysis for the first time.
“I’m convinced that genetics teachers have an obligation to help
students change from regurgitation — useful in some courses —
to a metacognitive or self-questioning mode,” he says.
“Our goal as teachers,” says Mayer-Smith, “must be to create a
shared, active learning environment in which students demonstrate
critical thinking and skills at problem-solving and transferring
learning to new situations.”
This challenge requires fundamental changes in the roles and actions
of teachers and students Griffiths and Mayer-Smith say.
An end to lecturing as some know it?
“Traditional lecturing is a medieval form which has outlived its
usefulness and must be redesigned to promote active learning rather
than just transfer information,” they conclude.
See also: More authors
than ever honoured at annual event, Author
flies high, Pianist’s
work in the key of Beethoven, UBC
Authors 2000.
