中学生は優性劣性について誤った認識をしているのか―遺伝学習後の生徒約1000人対象の質問紙調査の結果から―

抄録

In this genome age, citizens need to correctly understand personal genome based on the concepts of dominance and recessiveness; however, it has been reported that most university students understand it inaccurately. Replacement of the relevant terms by alternatives was proposed by the Genetics Society of Japan in 2017 to reduce conceptual misunderstanding. However, the level of such misunderstanding among junior high school students after their introduction to Mendelian genetics is not known. We developed a questionnaire to assess misconceptions regarding dominance and conducted a large-scale survey (n=1004) to assess junior high school students’ comprehension of dominance. We reached three important conclusions from the findings: 1) About 90% of students thought dominant traits to be advantageous for survival and that the most frequent traits in a population result from dominant alleles. 2) The erroneous association of dominance with trait frequency was stronger than the incorrect association of dominance with fitness. 3) Replacing the terms dominance and recessiveness may address student confusion of the ideas of dominance with fitness but may actually increase misconceptions associating dominance with trait frequency. Further studies are needed to reveal the mechanisms underlying these misconceptions before the terms are replaced.