Same, same but different! Exploring children’s understandings of within-species variation

ABSTRACT

The importance of genetic diversity, especially within small populations of endangered species, is becoming increasingly apparent. Genetic engineering techniques that could potentially enhance diversity are now being developed. However, the use of such techniques would require social licence and yet within the general population there is limited understanding of the importance of variation within a species. This qualitative study explored the potential of introducing the concept of within-species variation to New Zealand primary school children (5 to 11 year olds) with the aim of preparing these students to make critical decisions about the use of these techniques in their futures. Eighty-four children participated in the study and their explanations for the impact that differences between individuals may have were analysed revealing their scientifically acceptable understanding of the concept. But findings also highlighted potential misconceptions that they may retain. These misconceptions include a belief that animals think and behave in a manner similar to humans or that variations within a species are for identification purposes only. Findings showed that the concept of within-species variation could be introduced to primary school children. However, to do this successfully curriculum documents may need to be reviewed and teachers may require specific professional development.

KEYWORDS:

• Within-species variation
• genetic diversity
• biodiversity
• primary school education
• misconceptions
• cognitive biases

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Declaration and ethics statements

This study was granted ethics approval by The University of Auckland Human Participants Ethics Committee (Reference No. 021194) with all principals, teachers, parents and children providing informed consent. The authors would like to acknowledge the principals and teachers who facilitated this research and all the children who participated. The authors of this article have no competing interests to report.

Notes

1. The USA does not have a national curriculum. Instead states and school districts determine the standards to be implemented in schools. These decisions are often guided by the Benchmarks for Science Literacy (American Association for the Advancement of Science 1993) and, more recently, the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) (Achieve 2013) which are based upon A Framework for K-12 Science Education (National Research Council, 2012). For the purpose of this research these documents were regarded as a curriculum documents.

2. Canada does not have a national curriculum; each state sets its own educational expectations. Ontario was chosen as an example for this study.

3. All percentages rounded to the nearest whole number.

4. Within each age group children were assigned a label that consisted of their year group, gender and a randomly allocated number. Therefore, Y4B2 was a Year 4 boy, placed as number 2.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the