Playing with fire? The impact of the hidden curriculum in school genetics on essentialist conceptions of race

Journal of Research in Science Teaching

Volumn 51, Issue 4, 2014, Pages 462-496

  Donovan, Brian M ^a  

^a STANFORD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

science literacy; social justice; sociocultural issues; student beliefs; textbooks

Indexed keywords

BIOLOGY; CHROMOSOMES; CURRICULA; STUDENTS;

EXPLORATORY ANALYSIS; HIDDEN CURRICULUMS; HUMAN GENETIC DISEASE; READING COMPREHENSION; SCIENCE LITERACY; SOCIAL JUSTICE; SOCIOCULTURAL ISSUES; TEACHING AND RESEARCHES;

TEXTBOOKS;

EID: 84896316801     PISSN: 00224308     EISSN: 10982736     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/tea.21138     Document Type: Article

References (89)

1. Apple, M., (1993). The politics of official knowledge: Does a national curriculum make sense ? The Teachers College Record, 95 (2), 222-241.
2. Aronson, J., Fried, C. B., &, Good, C., (2002). Reducing the effects of stereotype threat on African American college students by shaping theories of intelligence. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 38 (2), 113-125.
3. Bamshad, M., (2005). Genetic influences on health. The Journal of the American Medical Association, 294 (8), 937-946.
4. Barton, M. L., Heidema, C., &, Jordan, D., (2002). Teaching Reading in Mathematics and Science. Educational Leadership, 60 (3), 24-28.
5. Beckwith, J., (2013). The persistent influence of failed scientific ideas. In, Krimsky S., &, Gruber J., (Eds.), Genetic explanations: Sense and nonsense. (pp. 173-185). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
6. Brooks-Gunn, J., Klebanov, P. K., &, Duncan, G. J., (1996). Ethnic differences in children's intelligence test scores: Role of economic deprivation, home environment, and maternal characteristics. Child Development, 67 (2), 396-408.
7. Brueckner, H., Morning, A., &, Nelson, A., (2005). The expression of biological concepts of race. In Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Philadelphia, PA
8. Carlson, B., Kelly, G., &, Cunningham, C., (1994). Teaching ChemCom: Can we use the text without being used by the text? In, J. Solomon, &, G. Aikenhead, (Eds.), STS education: International perspectives on reform (pp. 84-96). New York, NY: Teachers College.
9. Castéra, J., Sarapuu, T., &, Clément, P., (2013). Comparison of French and Estonian students' conceptions in genetic determinism of human behaviours. Journal of Biological Education, 47 (1), 12-20.
10. Clément, P., &, Castéra, J., (2013). Multiple representations of human genetics in biology textbooks. In, D. F. Treagust, &, C. Y. Tsui, (Eds.), Multiple representations in biological education. (pp. 147-163). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.
11. Condit, C., &, Bates, B., (2005). How lay people respond to messages about genetics, health, and race. Clinical Genetics, 68, 97-105.
12. Condit, C. M., Parrott, R. L., Harris, T. M., Lynch, J., &, Dubriwny, T., (2004). The role of "genetics" in popular understandings of race in the United States. Public Understanding of Science, 13 (3), 249-272.
13. Condit, C. M., Parrott, R., Bates, B., Bevan, J., &, Achter, P., (2004). Exploration of the impact of messages about genes and race on lay attitudes. Clinical Genetics, 66, 402-408.
14. Cooper, R. S., Kaufman, J. S., &, Ward, R., (2003). Race and genomics. New England Journal of Medicine, 348 (12), 1166-1170.
15. Dar-Nimrod, I. E., &, Heine, S. J., (2011). Genetic essentialism: On the deceptive determinism of DNA. Psychological Bulletin, 137 (5), 800-818.
16. Darling-Hammond, L., (2010). Structured for failure: Race, resources, and student achievement. In, H. R. Markus, &, P. M. L. Moya, (Eds.), Doing race: 21 essays for the 21st century. (pp. 295-321). New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.
17. dos Santos, V. C., Joaquim, L. M., &, El-Hani, C. N., (2012). Hybrid deterministic views about genes in biology textbooks: A Key problem in genetics teaching. Science & Education, 21 (4), 543-578.
18. Duncan, R. G., Rogat, A. D., &, Yarden, A., (2009). A learning progression for deepening students' understandings of modern genetics across the 5th-10th grades. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 46 (6), 655-674.
19. Edwards, A. W. F., (2003). Human genetic diversity: Lewontin's fallacy. BioEssays, 25 (8), 798-801.
20. Egan, K., (1997). The educated mind: How cognitive tools shape our understanding. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
21. Evans, E. M., Spiegel, A. N., Gram, W., Frazier, B. N., Tare, M., Thompson, S., &, Diamond, J., (2010). A conceptual guide to natural history museum visitors' understanding of evolution. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 47 (3), 326-353.
22. Feldman, M. W., (2010). The biology of ancestry: DNA, genomic variation, and race. In, H. R. Markus, &, P. M. L. Moya, (Eds.), Doing race: 21 essays for the 21st century. (pp. 136-159). New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.
23. Fischbein, S., (1980). IQ and social class. Intelligence, 4 (1), 51-63.
24. Flynn, J. R., (1999). Searching for justice: The discovery of IQ gains over time. American Psychologist, 54 (1), 5-20.
25. Foster, M. W., (2009). Looking for race in all the wrong places: Analyzing the lack of productivity in the ongoing debate about race and genetics. Human Genetics, 126 (3), 355-362.
26. Gelman, S. A., (2004). Psychological essentialism in children. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8 (9), 404-409.
27. Glasgow, J., Shulman, J. L., &, Covarrubias, E. G., (2009). The ordinary conception of race in the United States and its relation to racial attitudes: A new approach. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 9, 15-38.
28. Goodman, A. H., (2000). Why genes don't count (for racial differences in health). American Journal of Public Health, 90 (11), 1699-1702.
29. Gould, S. J., (1996). The mismeasure of man. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.
30. Halliday, M. A. K., &, Martin, J. R., (1993). Writing science: Literacy and discursive power. New York, NY: Routledge.
31. Hardimon, M. O., (2012). The idea of a scientific concept of race. Journal of Philosophical Research, 37, 249-282.
32. Haslam, N., Rothschild, L., &, Ernst, D., (2000). Essentialist beliefs about social categories. British Journal of Social Psychology, 39 (1), 113-127.
33. Herrnstein, R. J., &, Murray, C. A., (1996). The bell curve: Intelligence and class structure in American life. New York, NY: Free Press.
34. Hirschfeld, L. A., (1998). Race in the making: Cognition, culture, and the child's construction of human kinds. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
35. Jayaratne, T. E., Ybarra, O., Sheldon, J. P., Brown, T. N., Feldbaum, M., Pfeffer, C. A., &, Petty, E. M., (2006). White Americans' genetic lay theories of race differences and sexual orientation: Their relationship with prejudice toward Blacks, and gay men and lesbians. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 9 (1), 77-94.
36. Jensen, A. R., (1969). How much can we boost IQ and scholastic achievement. Harvard Educational Review, 39 (1), 1-123.
37. Kaplan, J. M., &, Winther, R. G., (2013). Prisoners of abstraction? The theory and measure of genetic variation, and the very concept of "race." Biological Theory, 7 (4), 401-412.
38. Kaufman, J. S., &, Cooper, R. S., (2010). Use of racial and ethnic identity in medical evaluations and treatments. In, I. Whitmarsh, &, D. S. Jones, (Eds.), What's the use of race? Modern governance and the biology of difference. (pp. 187-206). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
39. Keller, J., (2005). In genes we trust: The biological component of psychological essentialism and its relationship to mechanisms of motivated social cognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88 (4), 686-702.
40. Kinzler, K. D., &, Dautel, J. B., (2012). Children's essentialist reasoning about language and race: Language and race. Developmental Science, 15 (1), 131-138.
41. Kitcher, P., (2001). Science, truth, and democracy. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
42. Kitcher, P., (2007). Does "race" have a future ? Philosophy & Public Affairs, 35 (4), 293-317.
43. Kloser, M., (2013). Exploring high school biology students' engagement with more and less epistemologically considerate texts. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 50 (10), 1232-1257.
44. Ladson-Billings, G., (2006). From the achievement gap to the education debt: Understanding achievement in US schools. Educational Researcher, 35 (7), 3-12.
45. Lee, S., Mountain, J., Koenig, B., Altman, R., Brown, M., Camarillo, A.,., Underhill, P., (2008). The ethics of characterizing difference: Guiding principles on using racial categories in human genetics. Genome Biology, 9 (7), 404.
46. Levin, F. S., &, Lindbeck, J. S., (1979). An analysis of selected biology textbooks for the treatment of controversial issues and biosocial problems. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 16 (3), 199-203.
47. Lewis, A. E., (2001). There is no "race" in the schoolyard: Color-blind ideology in an (almost) all-white school. American Educational Research Journal, 38 (4), 781-811.
48. Lewontin, R. C., (1972). The apportionment of human diversity. Evolutionary Biology, 6 (381), 381-398.
49. Lieberman, L., (1997). Gender and the deconstruction of the race concept. American Anthropologist, 99 (3), 545-588.
50. Lieberman, L., Hampton, R. E., Littlefield, A., &, Hallead, G., (1992). Race in biology and anthropology: A study of college texts and professors. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 29 (3), 301-321.
51. Markus, H., &, Moya, P. M. L., (2010). Doing race: 21 essays for the 21st century. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.
52. McGlothlin, H., &, Killen, M., (2010). How social experience is related to children's intergroup attitudes. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40 (4), 625-634.
53. Mertens, T. R., Hendrix, J. R., &, Henriksen, L. W., (1979). Biology teachers: Genetics educational needs and related values stances. Journal of Heredity, 70 (3), 161-165.
54. Morning, A., (2008). Reconstructing race in science and society: Biology textbooks, 1952-2002. American Journal of Sociology, 114, S106- S137.
55. Morning, A., (2009). Toward a sociology of racial conceptualization for the 21st century. Social Forces, 87 (3), 1167-1192.
56. Morning, A. J., (2011). The nature of race: How scientists think and teach about human difference. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
57. Mountain, J. L., &, Risch, N., (2004). Assessing genetic contributions to phenotypic differences among "racial" and "ethnic" groups. Nature Genetics, 36, S48- S53.
58. Nelkin, D., &, Lindee, M. S., (1995). The DNA mystique. New York, NY: W.H. Freeman.
59. No, S., Hong, Y., Liao, H. Y., Lee, K., Wood, D., &, Chao, M. M., (2008). Lay theory of race affects and moderates Asian Americans' responses toward American culture. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95 (4), 991-1004.
60. Norris, S. P., &, Phillips, L. M., (2003). How literacy in its fundamental sense is central to scientific literacy. Science Education, 87 (2), 224-240.
61. O'Connor, C., Lewis, A., &, Mueller, J., (2007). Researching "Black" educational experiences and outcomes: Theoretical and methodological considerations. Educational Researcher, 36, 541-552.
62. Omi, M., &, Winant, H., (1994). Racial formation in the United States from the 1960s to the 1990s. New York, NY: Routledge.
63. Opfer, J. E., Nehm, R. H., &, Ha, M., (2012). Cognitive foundations for science assessment design: Knowing what students know about evolution. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 49 (6), 744-777.
64. Parrott, R. L., Silk, K. J., Dillow, M. R., Krieger, J. L., Harris, T. M., &, Condit, C. M., (2005). Development and validation of tools to assess genetic discrimination and genetically based racism. Journal of the National Medical Association, 97 (7), 980-990.
65. Pauker, K., Ambady, N., &, Apfelbaum, E. P., (2010). Race salience and essentialist thinking in racial stereotype development. Child Development, 81 (6), 1799-1813.
66. Prentice, D. A., &, Miller, D. T., (2007). Psychological essentialism of human categories. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16 (4), 202-206.
67. Rachul, C., Ouellette, C., &, Caulfield, T., (2010). Tracing the use and source of racial terminology in representations of genetic research. Genetics in Medicine, 13 (4), 314-319.
68. Rattan, A., Savani, K., Naidu, N. V. R., &, Dweck, C. S., (2012). Can everyone become highly intelligent? Cultural differences in and societal consequences of beliefs about the universal potential for intelligence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103 (5), 787-803.
69. Raven, P. H., &, Johnson, G. B., (2002). Biology (6th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Publishing.
70. Relethford, J. H., (2002). Apportionment of global human genetic diversity based on craniometrics and skin color. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 118 (4), 393-398.
71. Risch, N., Burchard, E., Ziv, E., &, Tang, H., (2002). Categorization of humans in biomedical research: genes, race and disease. Genome Biology, 3 (7), 1-12.
72. Rosenberg, N. A., Pritchard, J. K., Weber, J. L., Cann, H. M., Kidd, K. K., Zhivotovsky, L. A., &, Feldman, M. W., (2002). Genetic structure of human populations. Science, 298 (5602), 2381-2385.
73. Rosenberg, N. A., (2011). A population-genetic perspective on the similarities and differences among worldwide human populations. Human Biology, 83 (6), 659-684.
74. Rosenthal, D. B., (1984). Social issues in high school biology textbooks: 1963-1983. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 21 (8), 819-831.
75. Schochet, P. Z., (2008) Technical methods report: Guidelines for multiple testing in impact evaluations. NCEE 2008-4018. National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance.
76. Sesardic, N., (2010). Race: A social destruction of a biological concept. Biology and Philosophy, 25 (2), 143-162.
77. Shiao, J. L., Bode, T., Beyer, A., &, Selvig, D., (2012). The genomic challenge to the social construction of race. Sociological Theory, 30 (2), 67-88.
78. Shtulman, A., &, Schulz, L., (2008). The relation between essentialist beliefs and evolutionary reasoning. Cognitive Science: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 32 (6), 1049-1062.
79. Spencer, Q., (2012). What "biological racial realism" should mean. Philosophical Studies, 159 (2), 181-204.
80. Skoog, G., (2005). The coverage of human evolution in high school biology Textbooks in the 20th century and in current state science standards. Science & Education, 14, 395-422.
81. Steele, C. M., (2010). In the air between us: Stereotypes, identity, and achievement. In, H. R. Markus, &, P. M. L. Moya, (Eds.), Doing race: 21 essays for the 21st century. (pp. 322-355). New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.
82. Steele, C. M., &, Aronson, J., (1995). Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69 (5), 797-811.
83. Swarts, F. A., Roger Anderson, O., &, Swetz, F. J., (1994). Evolution in secondary school biology textbooks of the PRC, the USA, and the latter stages of the USSR. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 31 (5), 475-505.
84. Turkheimer, E., Haley, A., Waldron, M., D'Onofrio, B., &, Gottesman, I. I., (2003). Socioeconomic status modifies heritability of IQ in young children. Psychological Science, 14 (6), 623-628.
85. Venville, G., Gribble, S. J., &, Donovan, J., (2005). An exploration of young children's understandings of genetics concepts from natural kind and entitativity perspectives. Science Education, 89 (4), 614-633.
86. Williams, M. J., &, Eberhardt, J. L., (2008). Biological conceptions of race and the motivation to cross racial boundaries. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94 (6), 1033-1047.
87. Witherspoon, D. J., Wooding, S., Rogers, A. R., Marchani, E. E., Watkins, W. S., Batzer, M. A., &, Jorde, L. B., (2007). Genetic similarities within and between human populations. Genetics, 176 (1), 351-359.
88. Yager, R. E., (1983). The importance of terminology in teaching K-12 science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 20 (6), 577-588.
89. Zeidler, D. L., Sadler, T. D., Berson, D. M. J., &, Fogelman, A. L., (2002). Bad science and its social implications. The Educational Forum, 66, 134-146.