Student Understanding of Meaning of the Experiment in the Genetic Recombination Experiment : Evidence from the Questionnaire of Students Who Joined a Summer Program at a University

Abstract

The introduction of Genetic Recombination experiments into upper secondary school biology classes has become widely implemented. However, it has not been examined whether students actually understand the whole meaning of the experiment or even the significance of each individual step that the experiment consists of. This study is aimed to make clear how well students understand Genetic Recombination experiments through the use of fieldwork; a questionnaire; and the interviews that were given after classes which used the experiments. Research has so far revealed the following results: (1) Approximately fifty percent of the students who participated in the experiment did not understand the whole meaning of the experiment. (2) About sixty percent of the students who conducted the experiment did not understand the significance of the important steps of the experiment, for example, adding arabinose and ampicillin to the medium. (3) The difficult and unfamiliar words used in the experiment hindered about forty percent of the students' understanding of the whole meaning of the experiment and the reasons behind each step of the experiment.