Teachers' conceptions of biological determinism in five countries: Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France and Italy
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Conference papersAbstract
The interaction between the genome and its environment (epigenetics) is a new paradigm in biology. Nevertheless, the notion of genetic determinism is still present in syllabuses and textbooks. What about teachers' conceptions? We analyzed the teachers' conceptions related to the genetic determinism of human performances in five European countries, using 24 questions of the Biohead-Citizen questionnaire. The conceptions of the 2038 teachers, when grouped by country, show clear and significant differences, being more deterministic in the three countries of North Europe (Finland, Estonia, Denmark) than in Italy and France, and more sexist for only some of the related questions. When grouped by religion, the differences are significant but disappear after suppression of the country effect, while this last one does not disappear after suppression of the religion effect: there is no specific religion effect. There is a gender effect (female teachers being more feminist), an effect of the level of instruction at University (the most instructed teachers having more knowledge but also some more tolerant attitudes), and an effect of age (the oldest believing more in genetic determinism). A Co-Inertia analysis shows significant correlations between teachers' answers on genetic determinism with their political opinions: genetic determinism (as belief of heredity of intelligence) and intolerant attitudes (as sexism and racism) are correlated with the most conservative political opinions. Finally, we found a specific and paradoxical effect of biology training of teachers: biologist teachers have, without surprise, more knowledge than their colleagues, but are also more convinced of the importance of genetic determinism: their training in biology still needs to be improved by introducing the most recent concepts of genetics, as epigenetics.
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