Linguistic Challenges in Mendelian Genetics: Teachers’ Talk in Action

ScienceEducation

Linguistic Challenges in MendelianGenetics: Teachers’ Talk in Action

KARIN THORNE, NIKLAS M. GERICKE, MARIANA HAGBERGDepartment of Environmental and Life Sciences, Karlstad University, Karlstad SE-65188,Sweden

Received 20 November 2012; accepted 14 June 2013DOI 10.1002/sce.21075Published online 30 July 2013 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com).

ABSTRACT: This study investigates Swedish teachers’ use of language when teachingMendelian genetics in compulsory school. The primary objective of the study is to explorehow teachers use the related concepts gene, allele, and anlag (a Swedish variant of theGerman word anlage) and how these are related to trait, central relations that have beenidentified as problematic in genetics education. Four teachers were recorded while teachinggenetics. The empirical data consist of 45 recorded lessons. The teachers’ verbal commu-nications were analyzed using a linguistic framework called thematic pattern analysis. Theresults showed a predominant use of the word anlag over gene, whereas there was a totallack of use of the word allele. The word anlag was used to mean both gene and trait. Anlagwas also used as a synonym for allele. The teachers’ language conveyed four categoriesof meanings regarding the gene-to-trait relationship: genes control traits, are identified bytraits, have traits, or are traits. This study thus highlights several linguistic challenges in theteaching of Mendelian genetics that might affect students’ learning. Moreover, the studyexemplifies how a linguistics methodology can be used to investigate science teaching.C© 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 97:695–722, 2013

INTRODUCTION

The aim of this study is to contribute to the understanding of potentially importantlinguistic sources of difficulties in teaching and learning genetics. Several researchers stressthat language plays a central role in learning science (Lemke, 1990; Mortimer & Scott,

Correspondence to: Karin Thorne; e-mail: [email protected] grant sponsor: The Hasselblad Foundation.

C© 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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2003; Ogborn, Kress, Martins, & McGillicuddy, 1996; Wellington & Osborne, 2001), andthere have been calls to improve teachers’ awareness of the importance of language inscience education (Fang, 2005; Wellington & Osborne, 2001). Language is not simply atool for mediating different meanings, but part of the meaning making itself. To learn thescience content is principally to learn the specific language of science (Halliday & Martin,1993; Lemke, 1990), and, according to Wellington and Osborne (2001, p. 2), “every sciencelesson is a language lesson” and “language is a major barrier (if not the major barrier) tomost pupils in learning science.”

Teachers play a key role in helping students master the typical language of school sciencewith its specific terms1 and style of talking (Mortimer & Scott, 2003). Since teachers areimportant for student learning and a major source of information for students is the teachers’spoken language, there is a need to acquire knowledge about the teachers’ language. Therehave been several studies of teachers’ talk in classrooms, for example, Dagher and Cossman(1992) examined different types of explanations teachers used in science classrooms; Wilson(1999) focused on teachers’ use of words with metacognitive and metalinguistic functionsin chemistry classes; Oyoo (2012) investigated physic teachers’ instructional language;Brown and Spang (2008) investigated teachers’ use of everyday and science language inteaching; and Nygard Larsson (2008) analyzed teachers’ language within the systematicsdomain in biology. However, despite recognition of the central role of language in learningscience and the importance of the teacher’s role in this matter (Mortimer & Scott, 2003),few studies have examined teachers’ language in action associated with specific sciencecontent.

In this study, we focus on the teachers’ language during genetic lessons in Grade 9(15–16 years). Genetics has enormous relevance in our society since it was establishedas a distinct branch of science at the beginning of the past century (Carlson, 2004). Itnow plays key roles in many aspects of our activities and lives, ranging from agriculturethrough biotechnology to medicine, and raises profound ethical issues as well. Therefore,it is essential for schools to educate students effectively about basic aspects of geneticsto help them make informed decisions throughout their lives. However, genetics has alsobeen identified as one of the most difficult domains in biology (Bahar, Johnstone, &Hansell, 1999). There is a large body of research that documents the difficulties in learningand teaching genetics (Knippels, 2002; Wood-Robinson, 1994). The relationships amongcentral concepts as well as gene function have been described in particular as problematic(Lewis, Leach, & Wood-Robinson, 2000).

Some studies have also specifically focused on the language of genetics. Martins andOgborn (1997), for example, investigated how people apply metaphors to understand ge-netic phenomena; Venville and Donovan (2006) pointed out the potential usefulness ofdifferent metaphors in teaching; and Rundgren, Hirsch, & Tibell (2009) investigated theuse of metaphors by students while learning about protein function. The use of technicalterms in genetics and associated problems have also been studied, notably by Pearsonand Hughes (1988), who showed the complexity of terms used in textbooks. However, toacquire information about the language associated with genetic phenomena that studentsare exposed to in the classroom, we believe there is a need to focus more explicitly on thelanguage used by the teachers during genetic lessons.

1Note that both term or technical term and word are used throughout the paper. When term or technicalterm is used, it indicates that it is a subject-specific word. However, we commonly use word when thisdistinction is not in focus.

Science Education, Vol. 97, No. 5, pp. 695–722 (2013)

LINGUISTIC CHALLENGES IN MENDELIAN GENETICS 697

BACKGROUND

In the following sections, we offer a brief history of the development of the concepts geneand allele and the older term anlag. We also discuss different meanings, understandings,and difficulties connected to these concepts and their functional relationship to traits. Theseare the primary concerns of our study.

Historical Development of Genetic Terms and Its Influence on SchoolScience

Meanings of words typically change over time, and over time words may acquire multiplemeanings. In semantics this is called polysemy (Lobner, 2002). A polysemous word is onethat has distinctly different but related meanings, a phenomenon that may be a source ofambiguity. The various meanings develop through time and can coexist (Murphy & Koskela,2010). The word gene is such an example that has numerous, shifting meanings, which isone source of the problems within genetics education (Meyer, Bomfim, & El-Hani, 2013).Another problem is the use of synonyms, because it adds to the already a large numbers ofterms within genetics and implies that students might have to learn several words with thesame meaning. Yet another is that words with slightly different meanings are sometimesmisused as synonyms. Both of these issues are partly due to the historical development ofthe genetics terminology.

The term gene was coined by William Johannsen in 1909. Before this term was invented,several other terms were used, for example, elemente and factor. Mendel himself used twodifferent terms: merkmal and elemente. Merkmal refers to a visible feature, that is, a trait,and occurs 150 times in his seminal 1866 paper Versuche uber pflanzen hybriden, whereaselemente refers to “unknown substances that might produce Merkmal” and is used only10 times (Moore, 2001, p. 15). In a publication describing his rediscovery of Mendel’s work,Correns (1950) uses the word anlage and on p. 40 writes, “this one may be called dominant,the other one the recessive anlage. Mendel named them in this way.” However, Mendel didnot use the word anlage at all and according to Moore (2001) it is “a word that, unlikeMerkmal and Elemente, described a discrete determinant that could move from parent tooffspring” (p. 18). Moore sees the term anlage more in line with the gene concept. Thus,words from different historical times in genetics had, and have, slightly different meanings.

In the Swedish language, a variant of anlage, anlag, is still in use. The term is typicallyassociated with Mendelian genetics and occurs in both spoken language and textbooks. Acomplicating feature of the word anlag is that it can be defined as a gene, in textbooks, forexample, but it can also be defined as predisposition (Svenska akademien, 2006), henceit has an unclear definition. The word anlage is also used in the English language, beingdefined in The Oxford English Dictionary (2012) as “The rudimentary basis of an organor organism; or the first accumulation of cells recognizable as the beginning of a part ororgan.” However, in other dictionaries, it is also defined as “A genetic predisposition to agiven trait or personality characteristic” (The Free Dictionary, 2012), and anlage is oftentranslated from Swedish into predisposition, or corresponding words, in several languagessuch as English, French, and Spanish. However, after communication with several biologyeducators from English-speaking countries, we understand that the term anlage is rarelyused in school science and is thus unknown to most teachers and students.

The common meaning of the word allele today is that it denotes a gene variant, one ofa number of alternative forms of the same gene. The term allele was not used by Mendel.William Bateson introduced the term allelomorph in 1906 as a description of contrastingtraits, that is, the term referred to traits at a macrolevel and not to the genes. Fifteen years


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later, George Harrison Shull shortened the term to allele (Carlson, 2004). The term allelehas been identified as problematic within education, commonly being misused as a synonymfor gene (Pearson & Hughes, 1988; Wood-Robinson, Lewis, & Leach, 2000; Lewis et al.,2000) and therefore has been difficult to understand in relation to the ideas of dominanceand recessiveness (Allchin, 2000).

Two major phenomena that the definition of the gene is based on are transmission andfunction (Portin, 1993). Transmission genetics, how genetic factors or traits are transferredfrom one generation to the next, was of focus in Mendelian genetics in the first half ofthe twentieth century. However, the fundamental mechanism of transmission was onlyfully understood after Crick, Watson, Wilkins, and Franklin solved the basic structure ofDNA in 1953 (Mayr, 1982). Subsequently, the primary focus of genetic research shiftedtoward functional aspects of genes, the relation between genotype and phenotype andbetween genes and their encoded products (i.e., proteins, which in Mendelian genetics,were regarded as physical traits of the individual) (Mayr, 1982).

In contemporary molecular genetics, the functional aspects of genes are understoodand described as biochemical molecular processes leading to the production of proteins.However, in Mendelian genetics this relation was totally unknown and in the explanatorymodel of gene function that arose in the early twentieth century, genes were seen asabstract entities that determined traits, essentially as physical traits in miniature. Therefore,the genotype (gene) was only vaguely separated from the phenotype (trait) (Mayr, 1982).

In a school context, this issue is interesting because Mendelian genetics comprises asubstantial part of secondary school genetics, as demonstrated in previous analyses oftextbooks used in six countries (Gericke, Hagberg, dos Santos, Joaquim, & El-Hani, 2012),including Sweden (Gericke & Hagberg, 2010a, 2010b). Moreover, Mendelian genetics,covering the inheritance of traits and the outcome of gene transmission illustrated in Punnettsquares, seems to comprise a substantial part of the genetics taught in many countries (e.g.,Dougherty, Pleasants, Solow, Wong, & Zhang, 2011; Stewart, Cartier, & Passmore, 2005;Stewart & Rudolph, 2001; Tsui & Treagust, 2010; Venville & Treagust, 1998, 2002).

Gericke and Hagberg (2007) defined several historical models of the gene, whichthey subsequently used in an analysis of the presentation of different models in uppersecondary textbooks (Gericke & Hagberg, 2010a). The textbook study by Gericke andHagberg (2010a, 2010b) revealed that different parts of the various historical models of thegene were used in parallel in the examined textbooks, including Mendelian, classical, andmolecular concepts, resulting in hybrid models that were sometimes conceptually incoher-ent. Similarly, Flodin (2009) showed that the gene is sometimes inconsistently presentedin college biology textbooks. Indeed, this inconsistency or incoherence appears to be acommon feature of the discourse in genetics textbooks used in many countries, includ-ing European, North American, and South American countries and Australia (dos Santos,Joaquim & El-Hani, 2012; Gericke et al., 2012). Furthermore, differences in the ways usedto describe genes do not appear solely across different contexts, but also within the sameparts of texts with no explicit clarification of the use of the different meanings of the wordgene. Consequently, the content can be seen as a source of confusion for the students incontrast to the common assumption that the science content is constant (Flodin, 2009).

To summarize, the gene and its function have been described and understood in variousways historically, which is reflected in textbooks. In this study, we focus on how teachersexplain genetics to students. The underlying issue we wish to elucidate is whether teachersalso give different meanings to the content in their spoken communication to students in theclassroom. To relate the teachers’ ways of describing genetic phenomena to how studentsunderstand genetic content, we first briefly overview research about students’ understandingof genetics.



Students’ Understanding of Genetics

Students’ understanding of genetics has been described as problematic in the researchliterature (e.g., Lewis & Kattman, 2004; Lewis et al., 2000; Marbach-Ad & Stavy, 2000;Tsui & Treagust, 2007; Venville, Gribble, & Donovan, 2005). Students are often familiarwith many genetic terms, but are less aware of what the terms mean (Lewis et al., 2000). Forexample, Lewis and colleagues (2000) showed in a study of 482, 14–16-year-old studentsthat many of them were unclear about the relationship between the concepts of gene, DNA,and chromosome. Students have also been shown to have problems with the distinctionbetween the concepts of gene and allele, which is possibly due to the confusion of thesewords in teaching (Wood-Robinson et al., 2000). Another reason could be that the termallele is not specifically dealt with in genetics education since only one third of the studentsin the study by Lewis and colleagues (2000) said that they had heard about alleles.

Students can think of genes in various ways (Martins & Ogborn, 1997; Venville &Treagust, 1998). For example, Venville and Treagust examined 14–15-year-old students’conceptions of genes and found four models of how students’ understanding changes froma basic to a more refined comprehension. In the first model, the gene is viewed as a passiveparticle whose most important feature is that it is passed between generations, a view alsoshown to be held by 14-year-old students before formal education in genetics (Smith &Williams, 2007). According to Venville and Treagust (1998), a second way of viewing thegene is to see it as an active particle that controls a trait. A third model is to perceive thegene as a sequence of instructions, and, finally, in the fourth model, the gene is viewedas a productive sequence of instructions, displaying an understanding of the connectionbetween genetic code, proteins, and phenotype. This last stage is rarely reached by students(Duncan & Reiser, 2007; Venville & Treagust, 1998). Venville and Treagust (1998) foundthat after instruction most students held a view of the gene in line with the second model,that is, as an active particle controlling a trait.

Students’ view of the gene as a particle is problematic since learning about the biologicalmechanisms that mediate the expression of a trait has been identified as one of the core ideasin teaching genetics (Duncan, Rogat, & Yarden, 2009). Lewis and Kattman (2004) arguethat if the students do not see the distinction between gene and trait and their connectionto different biological levels, they will have problems learning about these biologicalmechanisms. If there is no separation between gene and trait, there is no need to explainhow they are connected, which is an obstacle for learning. Thus it is important to addressthe difference between gene and trait in teaching.

However, several studies show that students do not separate gene and trait concepts.In a study by Marbach-Ad and Stavy (2000), ninth-grade students who had been taughtabout Mendelian genetics and cellular explanations of associated phenomena were askedto explain macroscopic genetic phenomena (e.g., the color of peas) using microscopic-level processes. Instead, the students tended to rely on macroscopic explanations, statingfor instance that traits are transmitted between generations without referring to geneticmaterial. Furthermore, the concept of gene was sometimes used synonymously with trait.Another study by Marbach-Ad (2001) also revealed that Grade 9 students explained genesas being either the same as a trait or responsible for a trait. The fact that students tend tosee genes and traits as the same things has also been documented by Lewis and Kattman(2004), who showed that students aged 14–19 thought of the gene as a trait-bearing par-ticle. Similarly, Smith and Williams (2007) found that 14-year-old students talked aboutgenes as trait-bearing particles and (in accordance with Venville et al., 2005) found thatyounger children had an unclear view of the gene, which did not separate gene and traitconcepts. Even university students have been shown to have basic views of the gene.


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Using models described by Gericke and Hagberg (2007), Agorram and colleagues (2010)showed that 33% of a group of university students held a conception of gene function inline with Mendelian genetics. Thus, viewing genes as the same as traits (or separated inan unclear way) seems to be a common conception among students at all levels in theeducational system. Therefore, it is a key issue to address in the teaching of Mendeliangenetics.

Linguistic Perspective

As discussed earlier, words within genetics can be used with shifting meanings. Ac-cording to Bakhtin, language cannot be described as a unitary system of words with fixedmeanings: “Language—like the living concrete environment in which the consciousness ofthe verbal artist lives—is never unitary” (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 288). Linell (2009) discussesfrom a Bakhtinian perspective that words have a meaning potential and that words’ mean-ings depend on the context. A language has linguistic norms and a core that is stable andrecognizable, but according to Bakhtin (1981), a language is also stratified into differentsocioideological languages. This is found, for example, in languages of different socialgroups, generations, or professions. There can be tensions and contradictions between dif-ferent “languages” within a language, for example, everyday language, scientific language,or language from different time periods. However, they coexist and sometimes intersect.Moreover, these different languages can be used by the same person depending on context,but the context might not always be totally clear or the speaker might not master the sociallanguage in question; therefore, two different social languages can mix. This can occur evenwithin a single utterance, something that Bakhtin (1981) names hybridization, which canbe unintentional and unconscious. Such a language can be denoted an interlanguage, a mixbetween different languages, and is reported to commonly appear in the school classroom(Lemke, 1990; Olander & Ingerman, 2011).

To discern how meaning and hybridization of different social languages appear in theteachers’ spoken language, we have used a theoretical approach positioned within soci-olinguistics that relies on the works of Halliday and Matthiessen (2004) as well as Lemke(1990). Halliday and Martin (1993) argue that there is an awareness in education about thedifficulties with scientific terms. However, the terms themselves are not the central problem.Students can even find it amusing to learn new terms, but the real challenge is how theseterms relate to each other in a complex pattern. Terms are not separated from each other,nor is it possible to define them in isolation. Rather, how the terms relate to each other iswhat is crucial. A major feature of scientific language is its specific grammar, which couldstrongly contribute to learners’ difficulties. According to Halliday and Martin (1993), evena scientific text with few technical terms can be clearly identified as scientific because ofthe specific wordings. Thus, the specific language of science is due to the interplay betweentechnical terms and the wordings, that is, the lexicogrammar (Halliday & Martin, 1993).However, research in science education has not devoted as much attention to grammaticalaspects of the language teachers’ use. In this study, we provide a semantic analysis ofteachers’ use of language while teaching genetics, which contributes to existing knowledgeabout difficulties with technical terms.

Differences in the ways terms are combined into sentences, and phrases give rise todifferent meanings. Words themselves do not have exact meanings, but we can think ofthem as having approximate meanings, which vary depending on the context and theircombination with other words (Lemke, 1983). This functional view of language is based onthe theoretical framework of systemic functional linguistics (SFL), which is concerned withlanguage as a source of meaning that considers the functions of the grammar in creating



and expressing meaning (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004). In the SFL tradition, the realizedmeaning is frequently discussed (e.g., in Holmberg, Karlsson, & Nord, 2011), that is, themeaning created by the language. Concerning the SFL model of language, Christie andDerewianka stated: “Such a model is concerned not so much with developments in syntaxand structure per se, but with the relationship between linguistic form and the meaningsbeing realized by those forms in context” (2008, p. 4). Science content does not consist ofconcepts that can be defined separately. Realized meanings, that is, the content expressedthrough language, depend on how words are connected to other words or phrases, and thespecific ways in which terms and concepts are related to each other create patterns thatLemke names thematic patterns: “What makes the language of science distinctive is pri-marily, but not exclusively, its semantics: the specific relationships of scientific meaningsto one another, and how those relationships are assembled into thematic patterns” (1990,p. 21). This means that the science content is a pattern of relationships between differentwords, or more specifically, the meanings of words. According to Lemke (1990), sciencecontent can be described in various ways, using diverse words and grammatical construc-tions to express the same things or phenomena. Words may differ, for example, through theuse of synonyms; therefore, the words in a thematic pattern are named items. An item, thatis, a unit in a thematic pattern, could be expressed by different words, but with a sharedmeaning. For example, eye color, coloration of the eye, blue, or brown, could all refer toeye color, which then is the item. Items are related to each other in typical ways, therebyforming thematic patterns that constitute the science content (Lemke, 1990). For example,if we say genes control skin color, it has the same meaning as saying the pigmentation ofthe skin is determined by genes, because the relation between the items genes and skin colorstays the same. Thus, although different wordings and grammatical constructions are used,the same meaning is realized because the same semantic relation connects the two itemsgene and skin color. In this specific example, the semantic relation is Actor/Process/Goal(see Table 1). When students are learning science content, what they do is to identify thethematic patterns of the content, which are repeated in different lessons or textbooks. Thatis, teachers and textbooks may explain the content in different ways using different words,but the content should remain similar because of the thematic patterns. Therefore, it iscrucial for teachers to explain key concepts and their relations to each other clearly andexplicitly. It is important to clarify how concepts relate to each other in different contexts,although it is of course impossible to clarify how different words relate to each other inevery statement. The students learn scientific language by talking with someone who hasalready mastered this specific way of talking, such as, for example, a teacher who has mas-tered the thematic patterns (Lemke, 1990). But what about science content that is knownto be difficult, such as genetics? Could there be something in how the thematic patterns arepresented that contributes to the difficulties?

Genetics is a content domain that is known to include problematic concepts; hence, it isof interest to see whether there are features in teachers’ language that cause the difficultiesstudents’ experience. Thematic pattern analysis has been found to be useful in earlierstudies in science education. For instance, in two recent studies Lundstrom (2011) used theapproach to identify typical thematic patterns in student discussions about the human bodyand health, whereas Nygard Larsson (2011) analyzed how explicitly teachers and textbooksaddressed semantic relations between systematic biology concepts. Our focus in this studyis on linguistic aspects, not because other semiotic aspects are less important, but becausewe believe that spoken language is a major source of information for the students, whichhas been unexplored in the context of genetic teaching.

Since the importance of teaching students about the relations between genes and traitsin genetics has been identified (Lewis & Kattman, 2004), as well as the crucial role


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TABLE 1Brief Descriptions of Semantic Relations, Based on Halliday and Matthiessen(2004) and Lemke (1990), and Examples (One General and One Genetic forEach Type)

Semantic Relations Examples

Attribute/CarrierAn Attribute is a descriptive

characteristic of something, theCarrier. The verb is commonlyconnects the attribute with thecarrier.

In The apple is red, red is an Attribute of the applewhile the apple is the Carrier. A genetic example isThe gene (Carrier) is weak (Attribute).

Classifier/ThingA Classifier indicates the sort of

thing a speaker is referring towhen there is more than onepossibility, that is a word thatindicates a particular subclass ofa thing.

In A winesap apple, winesap functions as aClassifier of apple, the Thing.

In genetics, genes are often described as eitherdominant or recessive, which are two variants orsubclasses of genes. In the sentence, This childhas a dominant gene, dominant is a Classifier ofthe Thing gene.

Epithet/ThingEpithets are adjectives, for

example, old, long, blue, or fast,that precede the thing inquestion, that is, the Epithetdescribes a quality of the thing.

In A red apple, red is an Epithet of the Thing apple. Agenetic example is A large chromosome, wherelarge is an Epithet of the Thing chromosome.However, there is not always a clear distinctionbetween an Epithet and a Classifier, asexemplified by Halliday and Matthiessen (2004)using fast trains, where fast could function eitheras a description of the train as going fast or as aword to classify the train as an express train. In thefirst case, fast functions as an Epithet and in thesecond as a Classifier.

Qualifier/ThingA group of characterizing words

following a Thing function as aQualifier

In the sentence The apples in protective paper,apples would be the Thing and in protective paperwould be a prepositional phrase functioning as aQualifier. A typical genetic example is The gene(Thing) for blue eyes (Qualifier).

Quantifier/ThingA Quantifier is a quantitative

characteristic of a thing, like anumber.

In The three apples, three is the Quantifier of theThing apple. A genetic example is Eleven(Quantifier) genes (Thing) are involved.

Location/LocatedA location describes where

something is located. The thingbeing located is named Located.

In the sentence The apple is in the box, the apple isLocated, in the box, the Location. An illustrativesentence in genetics is The gene (Located) is onthe chromosome (Location).

Agent or Actor/Process/GoalAn Actor is whatever is responsible

for a Process, something thathappens to an entity that isacted upon, a Goal.

In The researcher eats an apple, the researcher isthe Actor responsible for the Process eating. Theapple is the Goal of impact.

Continued



TABLE 1Continued

Semantic Relations Examples

In both of the following two sentences, the gene isthe Actor and the eye color is the Goal, that is, theorder of the words does not matter:

The gene (Actor) controls (Process) the eye color(Goal)

The eye color (Goal) is controlled (Process) by thegene (Actor)

SynonymDifferent words that are used with

the same meaning in a givencontext are Synonyms.

In The researcher eats the apple and Theinvestigator eats the apple, researcher andinvestigator function as Synonyms.

In a genetic context the two expressions dominantgene and dominant anlag, gene and anlag havethe same status as Synonyms.

Relational ProcessA Relational Process defines and

establishes relations betweentwo participants. It is commonlyused in scientific texts, and theuse of the word Process in thiscontext is typically realized by beor have. That is, this type ofprocess does not vary with timeand involves no input of energy.

In A gene is a stretch of DNA, the two participants,the two related “be-ers”, are gene and a stretch ofDNA.

In An anlag is a trait, the two related “be-ers” areanlag and trait.

CircumstanceCircumstances express additional

meanings about when, where,how or why something happens.

In The apple fell from the tree, from the tree is theCircumstance.

In the genetic example A gene was inherited from theparent, from the parent is the Circumstance.

language plays in science education (Lemke, 1990), our study was designed to generatenew knowledge by combining these two aspects.

AIMS OF THE STUDY

The aim of this study is to examine teachers’ language when teaching Mendelian genetics,how teachers use the words gene, allele, and anlag2 and to explore the meanings given tothese words using thematic pattern analysis. We also explore the realized meanings of theirspoken communication regarding the connection between the items gene and trait duringtheir lessons.3

We believe the results of this thematic pattern analysis provide an important source ofinformation about possible causes of the difficulties students experience while learninggenetics. By revealing what is presented to the students through teachers’ spoken language,

2We will continue to use the Swedish spelling anlag (the same in both singular and plural form), becausethis Swedish variant is not equivalent with the English use of the word anlage.

3Items can be represented by different words with synonymous meaning, for example, the item traitcould be expressed as hair color, skin color, or brown/blue.


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we aim to contribute to an understanding of the linguistic challenges connected to learningabout genes and their functions.

The specific research questions addressed are the following:

• Which meanings of the words gene, allele, and anlag can be found in secondaryteachers’ spoken language within the context of Mendelian genetics?

• How do the teachers make connections between the items gene and trait?

METHODS

Sample

This study takes a naturalistic approach, defined as collecting naturally occurring data(Robson, 2002 p. 549). That is, no intended intervention was made. Four ninth-grade teach-ers were observed and recorded during entire genetics teaching sequences that extendedover 3 to 5 weeks per teacher in schools located in a geographically convenient area thatthe researcher could visit several times a week. Genetics is commonly taught in Grade9 in Swedish compulsory schools, and prior grades include teaching about cell biology.Criteria for teachers participating in the study were that they should have at least 5 yearsof experience and be teaching genetics in a class during the time of data collection. Fourteachers with 6–12 years of teaching experience volunteered to participate in the study. Allteachers had the required examination in biology, which included genetics. They workedat two different schools, two female teachers at one school and two males at the other.The schools were Swedish public schools with average-achieving students from middlesocioeconomic backgrounds.4 The empirical data were collected by observation and audiorecordings of 45 lessons (41 hours) in total. Additional video recordings of the teacherswere made during sequences of whole-class instructions.

Ethics

The study was guided by Swedish Research Council ethical guidelines. Both the teachersand their students were informed about the study, and that the aim of the study was toinvestigate verbal communication in the classroom. They were not informed in detail aboutthe content focus of the study, that is, how they talked about and related specific geneticconcepts, since it could have affected their communication about the connection. Theteachers were made aware that the study could reveal both negative and positive aspects oftheir teaching, which we assert mitigates the ethical importance of withholding informationabout the specific content. Both teachers and students signed a consent form as an agreementto participate in the study and were informed (orally and in the written agreement) that theycould choose to withdraw their participation at any point of the study.

Data Collection

The teachers carried a microphone with a recorder during the recorded lessons, and allof their verbal communication was recorded during the whole teaching sequence. The firstauthor sat in the back of the classroom, taking notes and video recording parts of the lessonswhen the teacher talked to the class as a group.

4Based on data from a public register published by the Swedish National School Agency.http://salsa.artisan.se/.



All audio recordings were transcribed, and the transcripts were loaded into Transana5

software, which connects written transcripts to audio recordings. The software allowssequences of specific interest in a transcript to be selected and sorted into a collection,together with sounds connected to those sequences. This facilitated the analysis, sincein addition to the written text we retained other information about the communication,like intonation, if the teacher was using irony, and timing of speech. These are importantinformational sources when interpreting a verbal text (Lemke, 1998).

The transcripts were read and listened to repeatedly to identify sections with Mendeliangenetics. These included excerpts in which the teachers were dealing with heredity (e.g.,inheritance patterns of, e.g., eye, hair, or skin color, color of rabbit’s fur, diseases, orsyndromes) and Punnett squares, which conveniently display such patterns. The videorecordings were used to help us identify sequences concerning Mendelian genetics. Wecould see, for example, if the teachers were talking about a Punnett square.

Of the 45 recorded lessons, 26 included sections concerning Mendelian genetics, consti-tuting 7.5 hours of the recorded material in total. First, we analyzed the relations betweenthe words gene, allele, and anlag in all these sections. Second, we analyzed how the connec-tion between the items gene and trait was made. We identified a connection if the teacherswere talking about a trait, for example, color of hair or eyes, and at the same time madeany reference to a gene, or vice versa.

Data Analysis

Thematic pattern analysis is used to examine how different items (meanings of words) areconnected to each other. These semantic relations were used by Lemke (1990) to developthematic pattern analysis and are thoroughly described by Halliday and Matthiessen (2004).We used thematic pattern analysis as developed by Lemke (1990) to explore how the teachersestablished and communicated the scientific content in their talk and, more specifically,how their spoken language realized scientific meaning. The semantic relations used in ouranalysis are described in Table 1.

The analytical units in the thematic pattern analysis included the items gene and traitand their semantic relations. For example, when we examined the relation between geneand trait, we focused on the relation between them, regardless of the distance between thewords, which varied in the excerpts, being sometimes close and sometimes further apart.This is illustrated in two examples below, where the gene is related to the trait (color) in thesame way, although there are more words between gene and trait in the second sentence:

1. A gene that gives the color.2. What we do now is that we chose to look at one gene, just one of all the genes that

the plant has, the one that gives color.

Other items that were repeatedly related to gene, allele, anlag, or trait were also consid-ered in the analysis. Examples of such words include dominant and recessive; key itemsin the thematic pattern since they occur repeatedly throughout the material and thus have acrucial function in the content expressed.

Two separate thematic pattern analyses were conducted. In the first, we addressed thefirst research question, by analyzing use of the specific words gene, allele, and anlag. In thesecond analysis, the second research question was addressed, focusing on the items geneand trait, that is, words endowed with the meaning of gene or trait.

5http://www.transana.org/.


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To address the first research question, regarding how the words gene, allele, and anlagwere related, if they were used as synonyms or words with different meanings, we focusedon the specific words gene, allele, and anlag, because we wanted to explore the meaningsascribed to these words in the teachers’ talk. The first step in this analysis was to identify alloccurrences of these three words in the selected transcripts. We then counted the numbersof times the words gene, allele, and anlag were mentioned, to assess how frequently theywere used and thus their significance in comparison to each other.

To analyze how the words gene, allele, and anlag were used in context, we analyzedhow the words were semantically related to other words. For example, by examining ifthe teachers related gene directly to anlag in relational processes, which is typical fordefinitions (see Table 1), as in An anlag is a gene, or An anlag is the same as a trait. Acomparison of how the words anlag and gene were related to other words indicated whetherthey were used as synonyms or not. For example, if a teacher interchangeably talked abouta dominant gene and a dominant anlag, both gene and anlag were semantically relatedto dominant in the same way. Having the same position in relation to adjacent words (inthis specific case dominant is an Attribute of the Thing gene or anlag; see Table 1) is anindication that the words are used synonymously because they have the same position inthe thematic pattern. In this first thematic pattern analysis, we were therefore able to seeboth how teachers defined the words and how they used the words in relation to each other,which are not necessarily always compatible.

The second step was to analyze the semantic relations between the items gene and traitand surrounding words within sentences where these connections were made. Thus, inthis analysis, we could not merely search for the words gene or trait, because they mighthave been represented by different words or expressions. For example, traits were oftenexemplified by hair, skin, or eye color or conditions like color blindness. In the analysis ofthe semantic relations of gene, we included the word anlag as a representative of the itemgene. This is not a straightforward issue, since the word was not always clearly definedas being a synonym for gene. However, in the examples in this analysis, anlag is talkedabout as a hereditary determinant at the microlevel, that is, a representative for the itemgene. When we had identified the semantic relations between the items gene and trait, wewere able to discern the realized meanings, that is, the message or content conveyed by theteachers according to the relation between gene and trait in their spoken communications.

Validity and Reliability

The presence of a researcher in the classroom observing and recording the teaching willinevitably influence the teaching in some way, a phenomenon known as the Hawthorneeffect (Robson, 2002). In our study, the teachers might have put more effort than usual toteach well, but since they were not aware of the exact content focus of the research weassume that the Hawthorne effect on how they talked about connections between genesand traits was minimal. In addition, we assume that observing the teaching over severallessons reduced the effect, in accordance with the frequent use of prolonged involvementin qualitative research to increase its validity (Robson, 2002). Owing to these features ofour research design, using a situated approach over a long time period, we consider thevalidity of our results to be high in comparison with other more indirect methods such asinterviews.

Member checking was also used to secure the validity of the results (Robson, 2002). Weused this methodology to confirm that the thematic patterns we identified in the teachers’spoken communications were reasonable in the teachers’ opinions by discussing the resultsof our analysis with one of them. The teacher thought the results were reasonable and



described how he/she taught the genetics content well. We therefore conclude that ourresults were sufficiently valid and essentially correct.

In addition, to ensure intercoder reliability of our thematic pattern analysis, a researcherin linguistics, experienced in SFL, was contacted to give a second opinion. The results werediscussed with this external expert until a consensus was reached regarding the interpretationof identified semantic relations.

RESULTS

In the following presentation of the results, graphic illustrations of examples were pre-pared using C-map tools6 software, placing words in rectangles and indicating the semanticrelations in writing between them. In the excerpts shown, the four teachers are denoted T1,T2, T3, and T4 respectively. Students are denoted S.

The Words Gene, Allele, and Anlag: Both Synonyms and Words WithDifferent Meanings

The word anlag was frequently used by all four teachers. A search of the words inthe selected material revealed that the word gene was used 177 times, whereas anlag wasused 720 times (about four times as often). None of the teachers used the word allele atall.

The thematic pattern analysis showed that the teachers sometimes used the words geneand anlag synonymously and sometimes as words with different meanings. The word anlagwas used with different meanings, even by the same teacher: sometimes as the same thingas a gene and sometimes as the same thing as a trait. Its use was therefore sometimescontradictory, because both meanings of the word, as a synonym for gene and a synonymfor trait, could be realized in the same teacher’s talk.

Teachers 2 and 4 defined anlag as being the same thing as a gene, that is, semanticallyrelated it to the word gene in a relational process (see Table 1 for definitions of differenttypes of semantic relations) as in the following example:

T4: Note that both anlag and gene are words for the same thing.

The words gene and anlag were also used interchangeably, like Synonyms. The useof the words was similar in several ways, that is, the words had the same place in thethematic pattern, for example, both were used in expressions like the recessive gene andthe recessive anlag, where dominant or recessive function as classifiers (identifying thegene they were talking about) or epithets (descriptive characteristics) of the gene or anlag.They also used both expressions like the gene for black color and the anlag for black color,where the semantic relation is a Qualifier to Thing. As mentioned previously, the teachersnever used the word allele, even if that was the meaning of both gene and anlag in manyof the utterances. This means that both gene and anlag are functioning as synonyms forallele.

The teachers also talked about both genes and anlag as placed on the chromosomes, therelation Location/Located. These are examples that illustrates that the gene and anlag wereused in the same way with same semantic relations to other words.

Teacher 3, in contrast, defined anlag as being a trait in relational processes (i.e., one thingis said to be another thing; see Table 1), as in the two examples below:

6http://cmap.ihmc.us/.


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Figure 1. In the teachers’ verbal communications the two words gene and anlag were semantically related toother words in the same ways, that is, used in the same places in the thematic pattern and (hence) synonymously.

T3: Some anlag, that is, what you can see in you or your personality.

or

T3: The gene is a stretch of the DNA molecule which is a code for a certain thing, so agene is a code for your anlag.

In the following example, a student has just asked for a definition of the word anlag, andthe teacher answers:

T3: Well anlag..eh..no, but you could maybe give an example of an anlag then, to show thatyou know what . . .

S: Blue eyes.T3: Yes, it is..it is just different traits.

Teacher 3 also used the two words gene and anlag as if they have different meanings inphrases representing other types of semantic relations, for example, talking about the geneand anlag as two separate entities, and genes as Actors controlling anlag, the Goals (seeTable 1).

T3: The gene is what codes for an anlag.

However, despite repeatedly using anlag as a Synonym for trait, Teacher 3 also used thewords anlag and gene synonymously sometimes (see Figure 1). For example, the teachertalked about both gene and anlag as things located on chromosomes, thus using the samesemantic relation, located/location, for both words (see Table 1).

T3: ( . . . ) on the chromosome here we have an anlag for brown eyes.

Teacher 3 also used the words interchangeably, in the same places in the thematicpattern, hence realizing the same meaning, talking for instance interchangeably aboutdominant/recessive genes and dominant/recessive anlag (see below and Figure 1).

T3: ( . . . ) she got a dominant healthy gene ( . . . ) a dominant, a healthy anlag.



Figure 2. The gene is an actor, responsible for a process occurring that affects the goal, the trait. The word severalis a quantifier for the thing, the gene.

Teacher 1 did not express any explicit definition of anlag, but used the words gene andanlag ambiguously in relation to each other; sometimes as synonyms and sometimes aswords with different meanings. For example, when the teacher was dealing with Punnettsquares, the words gene and anlag were used interchangeably. Anlag were also talked aboutas being located on chromosomes, as though an anlag is a structure on the chromosome,in the same way that genes are typically located on chromosomes. On the other hand, thewords gene and anlag were given different meanings in some sentences, where anlag wasgiven a meaning more in line with trait than gene and placed in positions often used whenmentioning traits. This is illustrated in typical expressions like a gene controls a trait andin the example below:

T1: What Mendel did only works when a single gene controls the anlag.

To conclude, in the Swedish language there are two closely related words in use, geneand anlag. The way the word anlag is used sometimes gives it the meaning of a gene andsometimes the meaning of a trait, and some teachers use the word indiscriminately.

How Teachers Connect Gene With Trait in Their Spoken Language

The thematic pattern analysis revealed that the content presented to the students was,according to the relation between the items gene and trait, inconsistent. We discerned fourrealized meanings of genes (in the following examples the gene item is often representedby the word anlag): (1) as active entities causing traits, (2) as passive entities identifiedby traits, (3) as having traits, and (4) as being traits. These four meanings were repeatedlyexpressed by all four teachers, with the exception of Teacher 3, who rarely talked in linewith Category 1 (as genes being active entities causing traits).

These different ways of talking about genes (e.g., as things controlling traits and genesas having traits) result in conflicting meanings. Talking about genes as having or beingtraits also fuses genes with traits. This was our main finding. In the following section,we illustrate different ways, within the four categories, that the teachers constructed thesemantic relations between genes and traits and exemplify how the different meanings wererealized through minor changes in the language.

Genes as Active Entities Causing Traits. One way of relating the items gene and traitwas to say that a gene controls a trait, ascribing to the gene the function of being activelyresponsible for the trait’s occurrence. This kind of construction indicates that a gene isan active thing that is doing something. There is an Actor/Process/Goal semantic relationbetween gene and trait, where the actor is that which is responsible for something thathappens, a Process, to an entity that is acted upon, the Goal (trait). The occurrence of aprocess between gene and trait was expressed not only by controls but also by other verbslike tells, determines, and matters. In these cases, it was commonly emphasized that severalgenes act to create a trait, a relation where the number (or a word indicating a number ofthings) is a Quantifier of the genes. In this relation, the gene is the Thing. This thematicpattern is illustrated in Figure 2.


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Figure 3. The teachers often talked about genes being for certain traits, a phrase in which a trait (white color, forinstance) functions as a qualifier, telling students which specific gene variant they were talking about.

T1: eye color is not controlled by just one single gene but it is controlled by I think it is11 genes that co-operate to form, bring out an eye color.

T4: it is not like one anlag determines the skin color but anlag co-operate, and sometimestwo can co-operate so the child might get a lighter skin color instead.

Genes as Passive Entities Identified by Traits. All the teachers commonly connectedgenes with traits in expressions such as the gene for eye color. Such expressions mainlycommunicated the specific gene or allele the teacher was talking about, connecting itpassively to a trait without involving any action. The prepositional group for eye color isa postmodifier, placed after the word gene (or anlag), and thus functions as a qualifier ofthe word gene (see Table 1). A qualifier characterizes a Thing, in this case the gene (seeFigure 3). In this kind of expression, the qualifier defines the gene as being for a specifictype of trait. In the following examples, the genes (anlag) are defined as being for diseases:

T4: There are anlag for diseases as wellT2: ( . . . ) the anlag for color blindness and color vision for that matter, is on the X-

chromosome

While the expression gene for . . . in the examples above was a way of communicatingconnection to a trait in a general sense, the expression gene for was also used as a way ofdistinguishing between different alleles. An example is the prepositional group for blackcolor, which contains a specific trait (black color) specifying the allele the teacher wasreferring to. A typical example is shown below where a teacher talks about genes (anlag)for white or black color:

T4: They are either a anlag for black color or a anlag for white color

Genes as Having Traits. While the teachers were talking about how different genecombinations give rise to different traits and referring to Punnett squares, instead of sayingthe gene for . . . , the teachers commonly used a shorter form, for example, the white gene,to identify which gene they were talking about. This is illustrated in the two examplesbelow:

T3: And this chromosome, it had its white anlag there.T4: He only got brown anlag, the man.

In these examples, we can presume that the teachers were using the colors to distinguishthe genes they were talking about, that is, the colors were intended to function as Classifiersof the genes. However, such expressions are ambiguous, since the colors could be construedas Epithets (descriptive characters of the genes), implying that the genes were blue or brown,for example. Indeed, it might not be obvious for the learners if this is merely a way of tellingwhich genes teachers are talking about or if the Classifiers are really descriptive charactersof the genes. As described in Table 1 under the heading Epithet /Thing, it is not alwayseasy to discern whether a descriptive word that precedes the thing in question is a Classifieror an Epithet. This means that the trait, for example white, could actually be seen as a



Figure 4. In some cases, the teachers spoke ambiguously, using adjectives describing traits that could be construedas either Classifiers or Epithets of genes.

Figure 5. In some cases, the teachers attributed traits to genes, saying, for instance, that a gene is white.

descriptive character of the gene (see Figure 4). Regardless of the message the teacherwants to communicate, linguistically speaking they are actually taking about the gene asbeing colored.

Moreover, genes were sometimes attributed with traits, for instance, a gene was explicitlysaid to be white. This more strongly expresses a meaning that the gene actually is whitethan in cases where the color could function as an Epithet (see Figure 5). An example wherethe gene is attributed with a trait is shown in the example below:

T1: This will have the consequence that for a rabbit to be white, both anlag for color mustbe white. That is from both the mother and the father. So if you look at how the anlaglook like on this rabbit for color, so . . . w stands for white. And one of the anlag is whiteand the other anlag is white.

Genes as Being Traits. This category of the relation between the gene and trait conceptswas expressed in two manners. First, both genes and traits were sometimes semanticallyrelated to other words in the same ways. Both genes and traits were said to be dominant/recessive, transported over generations, and located on a microlevel structure. This meansthat gene and trait had the same position in the thematic patterns. We regard talking aboutgenes and traits in the same ways and interchangeably as a possible contribution to theinterpretation of the gene and trait as being the same thing. Second, the teachers talkedabout traits as if they exist on the microlevel and sometimes, depending on whether theyare dominant or not, as becoming visible.

Use of Genes and Traits Interchangeably. When the teachers were constructing or re-ferring to Punnett squares, a central part of the meaning they expressed was that a certaincombination of genes will give rise to a certain trait. A further essential aspect of theseexplanations is that the genes are transported from one generation to the next. An illus-trative summary of the meaning the teachers expressed in such cases would be somethinglike If you get a dominant gene for brown eyes from your mother and a recessive gene forblue eyes from your father, you will have brown eyes. However, in the authentic examplesthe message was not this clear cut. The teachers expressed this content in various ways,referring interchangeably to genes and traits. For example, genes were talked about as beingdominant or recessive, or transported over generations, but the traits themselves were alsotalked about as being dominant or recessive and transported over generations. Thus, genesand traits were talked about in similar ways, providing possibilities for students to see themas the same thing. While the teachers were talking about inheritance patterns they classifiedtraits as well as genes as being dominant or recessive (see Figure 6). In the followingexample, the teacher is talking about color blindness with students and, with the help of


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Figure 6. There could be different semantic relations to dominant/recessive, but they are the same whether theteachers talked about genes or traits.

Figure 7. In some cases, the teachers used the same semantic relations when talking about genes or traits, forexample, talking about both as being transferred over generations.

a Punnett square, about whether or not a girl will be color blind. The teacher alternatesbetween classifying the genes and the trait as dominant/recessive.

T3: Is this girl going to be red/green color blind?S1: YesS2: YesT3: No. Because she’s got a dominant healthy gene. But it is a recessive disease. The girl

got a dominant . . . a dominant, a healthy anlag. Not sick, alright?

Both genes and traits were also talked about as being transported between generations,from parent to offspring (see Figure 7). Here is an example about getting genes from yourmother and father:

T4: ( . . . ) you get a anlag from your mother and a anlag from your father so for eyecolor you have two anlag in your chromosomes.

Here is another example where the trait itself, the color, is talked about as being trans-ported over generations:

T3: Two small f. That means that from its mother, the rabbit has inherited white colorand from its father, the rabbit has inherited white color, and then this will, we start witha rabbit that has inherited black color from both, then it should be two big F.

S: Big F?T3: Mm..because that means that it has inherited black color from both its parents.

This indicates that it is the trait, the color, itself that is transferred between generations(see Figure 7). In both examples, it is the offspring that gets or inherits the gene or trait,



Figure 8. In some cases, the teachers spoke about traits being located on a chromosome.

Figure 9. The teachers’ communications implied that a gene with a certain attribute (e.g., blackness) becomesvisible by some kind of process.

inferring that the offspring is an Actor, since the offspring is the one doing something,linguistically speaking, whereas getting or inheriting is the process involved. The geneis the Goal, the affected entity that is inherited. That the offspring gets the gene or traitfrom the parent is a circumstance. However, the main point we want to illustrate with thisexample is the same as in the previous dominant and recessive examples that the gene andtrait are placed in the same positions in relation to the other words used.

The teachers also sometimes talked about traits as being located on a microlevel structure(e.g., chromosomes) in the same way they often talked about genes being located onchromosomes (see Figure 8). However, this only occurred a few times.

Some examples are presented below of teachers talking about the traits as being locatedon genes, chromosomes, or in cells, in the way they commonly talked about genes as beinglocated on chromosomes:

T3: ( . . . ) let’s say that we have blue eye color on one of the genes and brown eye coloron the other gene, then we can say that only the one with brown eye color is used but theother is there.

In this first example, blue color is said to be on one of the genes and brown color is onthe other gene.

Here are two other examples where traits are said to lie along genes or on chromosomes:

S: Eh, but does it matter then if you get, what personality you get and things like that?T4: Yes. Those traits lie along the other genes.T2: And then on every place on these chromosomes there is a trait ( . . . )

And in the following two examples, the diseases are said to sit on the genes:

T3: ( . . . ) sex chromosome-bound diseases that is diseases that are placed on these genes,the same genes that determine what sex you will get.

In this example, the diseases are talked about as being located on the genes.

T1: Well boys only have one X-chromosome and color vision is placed on just the X-chromosome.

Traits at Microlevel Becoming Visible. Another way of talking that realizes a meaningof the genes as being traits was when the teachers talked about genes or traits as becomingvisible. The message expressed by the teachers was that a dominant gene is a gene forwhich only one is needed to become visible. Talking about the genes as becoming visible orshowing in combination with expressions like white genes is potentially problematic as itcould be interpreted that genes are miniature traits that exist on a microlevel and will showunder certain circumstances (see Figure 9). In the following example, the teacher impliesthat dominant genes (anlag) are genes that will become visible, immediately after saying


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that not all of our traits are visible, indicating that genes may either become visible viasome kind of process or remain invisible:

T3: ( . . . ) because if you have two anlag where one is dominant, and in this case brown isdominant over blue, then it will be brown eyes. Dominant anlag, when one of the anlagappear ( . . . ) When one of the anlag, well becomes visible . . . not all things show, allour traits ( . . . )

In the next example, the teacher talks about blue genes (anlag) and explains that recessivegenes can be present without showing:

T4: So it takes two blue anlag for the child to become blue eyed. And then you call thisch..eh anlag that exists but doesn’t show, that you call recessive.

This kind of expression realizes a meaning that the gene is colored, and if the gene isdominant it will show even if there is only one, whereas a recessive gene may remaininvisible. In the next example, the genes (anlag) are attributed with the colors white orblack, and the black gene is said to take over. That is, the black gene is here an Actor thatby some Process wins over the white gene and becomes visible:

T1: ( . . . ) if it’s going to be a white rabbit both the anlag must be white.Student: Mm.T1: Because they, because if there is a black and a white the black will take over and then

the black color will show.

In another example, shown below, one of the teachers talks about a trait as being trans-ferred between generations, as described earlier. In this example, the teacher also talks ina way that realizes a meaning that individuals can carry traits even if they do not show. Inthis lesson, a student asked about hair color and why an acquaintance could have red hairalthough one of his parents has brown hair and the other blond hair:

T1: Yes.Student: Could he have inherited it from her then?T1: Yes. Because, you can be, you can carry a trait without it showing.S: Mm.T1: And when you get children, when you then..then it could happen that the trait is passed

over to your child and in your child it will show.Student: What, (not audible) red haired?T1: What did you say?Student: Might I carry red hair?T1: Yes you could, for example.

The teacher answers the student that many genes matter in the case of hair color, butalso that these traits may have occurred many generations back in this person’s family. Theteacher explicitly says that we can carry traits even if they do not show. This might giverise to the interpretation that we somehow possess the traits themselves in some kind ofinvisible state, which equalizes the trait with the gene in the sense that it is something thatcould be present within a person, but not show.

CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION

Using thematic pattern analysis, we were able to show that the two closely related wordsgene and anlag were sometimes used as synonyms and sometimes with different meanings.The word allele was never mentioned, but the teachers’ use of the words gene and anlag



sometimes realized the meaning of allele. We also showed that teachers related the itemsgene and trait in different ways, which realized different meanings. This reveals a greatcomplexity in the communication of genetics in the classroom, which we conclude couldcontribute to the difficulties students have with the subject of genetics, as described inearlier research literature.

Teachers’ Language: A Source of Confusion

We think that the teachers’ ambiguous use of the word anlag could contribute to thestudents’ apprehension of genes and traits as being the same things, since they sometimesuse it to refer to a gene and sometimes implicitly to refer to a trait.

Our results indicate that the teachers’ use of the word anlag is not favorable for students’understanding, since it gives rise to conflicting meanings. The teachers defined the word,but when they subsequently used it in action they sometimes gave it another meaning. Inthe teachers’ use of the word anlag and gene, different social languages mix and createhybridization, which is probably unintentional. We see such an unconscious hybridizationas problematic in a teaching-learning context. Since the students most certainly do notmaster the different social languages, they cannot be expected to interpret the differentmeanings and relations of the words gene, anlag, and allele themselves.

The various ways in which the items gene and trait were related realized four scientificmeanings: That genes could be active entities causing traits, passive entities identified bytraits, having traits, or being the same thing as traits. For example, the teachers sometimesexpressed something like a gene controls a trait, realizing a meaning that the gene is anactor controlling something (the trait), implying that the gene and trait are two differententities. Expressions like the gene for . . . also imply that genes and traits are distinctentities, although the genes are not apparently active. However, the teachers sometimesused expressions like the white gene or the gene is white, implying another meaning; thatthe gene has the trait and that genes and traits are not distinct entities. Furthermore, theteachers sometimes talked about both genes and traits in the same ways (as transportedacross generations, dominant/recessive, or located on microlevel structures) and about genesas becoming visible, opening the interpretation that the gene is the trait. These differenttypes of relations between genes and traits were not separated from each other and usedin different explanations, but occurred in a mixed manner (sometimes within the samesentence). This indicates that the teachers did not deliberately choose to use different waysof relating genes with traits to clarify different aspects of the subject, but rather implicitlyoperationalized the content differently through their language in different moments. Thus,we also here see how different social languages (of Mendel, contemporary science, andeveryday speech) meet in the teachers’ utterances. This might confuse students, who willprobably experience difficulties in grasping the content.

A typical way that our teachers related a gene with a trait was by saying the genefor, an expression also recorded and discussed elsewhere in the research literature (dosSantos et al., 2012; Venville & Donovan, 2006). An earlier study (Pashley, 1994) foundthat students have problems with the allele concept and the distinction between alleles andgenes, due to the confusing terminology used by both teachers and researchers in everydaylanguage (Wood-Robinson et al., 2000). However, none of the teachers we recorded usedthe word allele at all, instead using wordings such as the gene for white color and thegene for black color to identify different alleles. In the expression gene for blue eyes, blueeyes is a qualifier for a gene, that is, a term to characterize the gene. This means that themain message in these kinds of expressions is to communicate which gene the teacher isreferring to, for example, when constructing or discussing Punnett squares. The gene for


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. . . is therefore simply a way of telling which allele the teacher is talking about. Our resultsindicate that the teachers deliberately leave out the word allele in their explanations. In thatway, their language loses scientific distinctiveness since they instead use the words gene andanlag with the meaning of allele. However, maybe the teachers want to reduce the numberof words in an already overloaded terminology, which might be a wise decision given thecomplex meshwork of words that students are expected to grasp. Accordingly, there havebeen calls to select words with care when teaching genetics (Pearson & Hughes, 1988).

The use of the wording the gene for has also been mentioned as problematic becauseit implies a deterministic understanding of genes (e.g., Carver Waldahl, & Breivik, 2008;Gericke et al., 2012; Nelkin & Lindee, 1995). For example, Venville and Donovan (2006)suggest that expressions like the gene for kidney cancer can make it seem that the gene’sfunction is to cause cancer or that the gene for long legs may result in a simplified viewthat one gene may be responsible for an organism having long legs. In reality, most traitsarise through highly complex processes involving interactive effects of the expression ofnumerous genes and environmental factors. Our data show that the teachers commonlytalked deterministically not only about the gene for, sometimes in examples like the genefor blue eyes, but also in examples like genes for diseases, which makes it seem that thefunctions of some genes are to cause diseases. However, the teachers also repeatedly pointedout that many genes often cooperatively create a trait, that is, that its inheritance is polygenic,thereby emphasizing a more complex relation between genes and traits. Nevertheless, thiswas done in a rather simplistic manner without considering any influence of environmentalfactors, thus retaining a deterministic aspect, at least in this specific context.

As we commented in the Results section, the teachers sometimes talked about the whitegene. When white preceded the word gene it was intended to relate semantically to the geneas a Classifier specifying which gene the teacher was referring to. However, as we alsocommented, the word is ambiguous in this position, preceding the Thing, because it couldalso function as an Epithet. The teachers alternated between expressions like the gene forwhite color and the white gene. This might not cause problems for learners if they interpretwhite in the expression the white gene as a trait-based Classifier, merely identifying thegene in question rather than as an Epithet describing a character of the gene, that is, thegene as actually being white. However, problems may arise in expressions like the gene iswhite. Here, the trait (white) cannot be seen as a way of classifying the gene. The colorwhite is an Attribute and nothing else to the Carrier gene. Thus, such teachers’ expressionscould be a source of misunderstanding.

Another factor that strengthened the meaning of the gene as actually being, for example,colored is that when the teachers were talking about Punnett squares they also talkedabout the genes as becoming visible, or showing, which could be interpreted as the genesbeing literally colored and either showing or not showing. The teachers described thedominant genes as acting entities that win or dominate over the recessive genes. Allchin(2000) discusses the concept of dominance and notes several problems with its use. Oneof the major problems is that describing a gene (allele) as dominant could be mistakenlyinterpreted as the gene-suppressing expression of recessive genes, which is not the case;dominance is merely a discerned pattern, not a property of the gene. However, the teachersdescribed some genes as dominant, using the word dominant as an Epithet (descriptivecharacter), giving the genes the function of an Actor (winning, taking over) and implyingthat the genes actively do things to the recessive genes and then become visible. Thus, ourdata show that the possible learning problems regarding the dominance concept suggestedby Allchin really occur in biology classrooms.

The students might understand this as a linguistic simplification. However, it might alsomake the students think that the genes actually have the mentioned traits. Several studies



have found that students comprehend genes and traits as being the same thing (Lewis &Kattman, 2004; Marbach-Ad & Stavy, 2000; Smith & Williams, 2007), and we believethat these ways of relating genes with traits could contribute to this misunderstanding.When speaking, one cannot clarify definitions and describe phenomena unambiguously inevery single case. That would be unbearably tedious. As Venville and Donovan (2006) stateexpressions like “gene for long legs” are “convenient figures of speech” to relate a gene toa trait. But when teachers use these linguistic simplifications, students may be confused.When we talk to someone initiated in the subject, we might be able to express ourselvesusing looser expressions without risking misunderstanding. However, when we are talkingto learners who are striving to grasp new content, it is crucial to be aware of the ways weare relating words to each other so that the thematic patterns, that is, how the words aresemantically related to each other, convey intended meanings and are not inconsistent orconflicting.

Teachers’ Language: A Reflection of History

One could ask why the teachers talk the way they do. We believe that it is highlyunderstandable that the teachers talk about this subject in such a complex and ambiguousway. It simply reflects the complexity of the subject itself, which is due to the history ofgenetics. We regard the teachers’ way of using the word anlag as reflecting how peopletalk about anlag in everyday speech, with roots in Mendelian genetics, where anlage isstill an abstract unit. However, currently we have access to more scientific knowledge ofmolecular genetics. This knowledge includes a molecular understanding of the gene as astring of DNA, which might affect the meanings associated with the word in the contextof teaching genetics. Often anlag currently bears the meaning of being a physical gene aswell.

In Mendel’s time, the gene was an unknown factor and was viewed as an abstractentity indistinct from the trait. When teachers talk about Mendelian genetics, it will beunder the influence of the genetic models from a specific historical time, although theyare aware of and influenced by more modern views of the gene. Indeed, the teachers doincorporate more modern views in their explanations, such as the information conceptand polygeny, that is, they hybridize aspects from different historical models within theirexplanatory models. Similar findings have been previously presented in textbooks (dosSantos et al., 2012; Gericke & Hagberg, 2010a, 2010b). Currently, we know more aboutthe complexity of genetic mechanisms and modern knowledge inevitably influences theway teachers present the subject, for example, in talking about non-Mendelian conceptssuch as polygeny and genes as informational structures. However, the use of hybrid modelsin education can be a learning obstacle for students (Justi and Gilbert, 1999). Hence, theuse of hybridized explanatory models incorporating non-Mendelian meanings of conceptswhen teaching Mendelian genetics might foster learning difficulties due to conceptualincoherence (Gericke et al., 2012).

The way the teachers talk incorporates elements from several historical models defined byGericke and Hagberg (2007), and this hybridization of different models is realized throughconfusing language. Using the gene as an instrumental concept, an abstract entity to predictinheritance patterns, is not problematic according to dos dos Santos et al. (2012) as longas the teacher clearly and explicitly states that the gene is being used as an abstract entityand not as a physical entity. Problems arise when the teachers mix such an instrumentalview of the gene with a view of the gene as a physical entity (dos Santos et al., 2012).However, in our data we see adverse implications of the use of the word anlag as aninstrumental gene without any explicit definition of it as an abstract unit of inheritance


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(a Mendelian gene). The use of the specific word anlag could be seen as an indication thatthe gene is an abstract entity rather than the kind of gene talked about in other contexts. Aproblem arises, however, since the teachers do not explicitly and consistently treat genesas abstract entities, but instead mix such usage with talking about them as being locatedon chromosomes (as classical or realist genes) and about genes controlling traits, therebyseparating genes from traits (classical genes) and making them more than abstract entitiesthat can be used to predict inheritance probabilities. Thus, teachers do not help studentsto discern different historical contexts and as has been shown in a previous study studentsdo not make a distinction between Mendelian and molecular genetics. Instead, they viewmolecular genetics as a more detailed version of Mendelian genetics (Gericke, Hagberg, &Jorde, 2013).

Genetics has a long history, and the meaning of genetics-specific words has developeddifferently in various languages as well as in different social languages. In the classroom,these different meanings have come to intersect. The word anlag, for example, was relevantin science in the early history of genetics. Science developed, and the word anlag was soonto be replaced by the term gene. In many languages, such as English, anlag never took holdin everyday language, but stayed strong in others, such as German and Swedish. The wordanlag was never totally abandoned within science in these countries. It was an establishedword in everyday language and continued to be used within education. But it now has anadditional meaning of a contemporary gene with a physical base. We see this as an exampleof what Bakhtin says about different social languages:

Thus at any given moment of its historical existence, language is heteroglot from top to bot-tom: it represents the co-existence of socio-ideological contradictions between the presentand the past, between differing epochs of the past, between different socio-ideologicalgroups in the present, between tendencies, schools, circles and so forth, all given a bodilyform. (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 291)

The Importance of Language in Teaching

By analyzing language, we can show that minor variations in nuances may result inprofoundly different meanings. When we know the content of a scientific subject, we knowthe thematic pattern of the language. If we listen to a person talking about a subject we arefamiliar with, it does not matter if he or she excludes some words or even says somethingwrong. We can still make sense of what the person says and discern the message, becausewe can fill in the gaps for ourselves (Lemke, 1990). It is different if we do not knowthe content, because then we try to understand the thematic patterns. This is the case forstudents for whom lessons are learning situations, and if the thematic patterns in teachers’spoken communications are inconsistent it will be difficult for them to grasp the content.

Our focus in this paper has been to explore the language students are exposed to inclassroom teaching. We recognize that the students’ voices are absent in this study. This isnot because we think the students’ perspective is unimportant, but because students’ under-standings have already been investigated in numerous studies (e.g., Gericke & Wahlberg,2013; Lewis et al., 2000; Marbach-Ad, 2001; Marbach-Ad & Stavy, 2000; Venville &Treagust, 1998), and we believe it is important to elucidate possible problems in the spokencontent presented to them, in addition to those in textbooks, which have already been shownto be sources of confusion (dos Santos et al., 2012; Gericke & Hagberg, 2010a, 2010b).However, we would like to draw attention to a question asked by a student in one of thelessons to illustrate how difficult it can be for students to grasp what teachers say, whatis important, and what is not, and what different combinations of words actually mean. In



the following example, the teacher had just incorrectly used a preposition, which seems toconfuse one of the students:

Student: What’s the difference [between] with respect to eye color and of respect to eyecolor? ( . . . )

Teacher: It’s just a mistake in wordings from me.

This misuse of a word was not intended to convey a specific nuance or meaning, butthe student did not recognize that he/she wanted to understand the different meanings. Wethink this is important to keep in mind when considering the different ways of talking aboutgenetics we have focused on in this article. Students try to understand what the teachersays, but it is not easy for them to distinguish the crucial and central parts of everythingthat is said.

Implications for Teaching and Further Research

Our contribution is that we have shown how the language teachers use in the classroomrealizes different meanings in ways that could contribute to known student difficultiesin understanding genetics. We think it is important to be aware of how small variationsin our expressions can change the meaning of what we say when teaching and that theteacher education community has a responsibility to address these questions. Although it issometimes useful to use everyday language in teaching (Brown & Spang, 2008), scientificlanguage serves an important function. Therefore, educators should pay careful attentionto this specific language so that students fully understand and are not left behind (Handet al., 2003). It has also been argued that teachers should clarify the different meanings ofwords that have different meanings in everyday language and science (Stromdahl, 2012).We think it would be useful to learners if teachers were more explicit about how differentwords relate to one other. As mentioned before, it is neither desirable nor possible to defineevery word or relation between words all the time, but greater awareness would maketeachers more attentive to unintended hybridizations.

One could of course question whether Mendelian genetics should continue to be part ofthe curriculum. The old model of the gene in Mendelian genetics might add to the difficultiesassociated with the subject. Punnett square exercises do not require any understanding ofgene function, and students may have a view of the gene as a passive particle and stillsolve these kinds of problems (Venville & Treagust, 1998, 2002). However, both teachersand students seem to enjoy Mendelian genetics, for instance, students interviewed byVenville and Treagust (1998, 2002) showed a preference for using Mendelian geneticsto explain how genes influence traits, probably because Mendelian genetics gives themconvenient tools for answering questions. Duncan and colleagues (2009) suggest a learningprogression in teaching genetics, from Grades 5 to 10, incorporating the Mendelian conceptthat correlations between genes and traits occur in certain patterns (although they do notmention Mendel explicitly). Whether we abandon outmoded scientific models and givepriority to modern science is an important question that needs to be further discussed. Butsince Mendelian genetics occupies a strong position within education today, we recommendtreating different historical models explicitly to avoid the implicit hybridization that mightcontribute to learning difficulties.

If the word anlag are to be used, we recommend the teachers to use it as a tool forteaching students to differentiate between the Mendelian gene and more contemporarymolecular definitions in Swedish secondary school. Its use should allow the teacher todraw a clear distinction between Mendelian and molecular genetics in school biology,provided anlag is explicitly distinguished from trait. However, in languages such as English


720 THÖRNE ET AL.

this opportunity is not so straightforward since anlag is obsolete in the genetics taughtin English-speaking countries. Instead, the word gene is used for all gene definitions.Consequently, the differentiation has to be stated in other words and it would be artificialto introduce the term if it is not used in everyday contexts outside school.

We are not claiming that our results are generalizable because of the limitations of oursmall sample, but we do claim that they provide some insight into the complex language ofgenetic teaching. In this study, we were able to show how variations in the language teachersuse while teaching Mendelian genetics could exacerbate confusion for the learners. Westill know very little about how teachers talk about different science content in authenticteaching situations though. This study supports the suggestion that further attention toteachers’ content-related talk in the classroom is required.

We would like to thank the teachers and students who participated in the study.

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Linguistic Challenges in Mendelian Genetics: Teachers’ Talk in Action

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