Persistência de concepções alternativas sobre meiose no ensino de genética entre licenciandos de ciências biológicas

Abstract

Meiosis and Mendel's Laws are important for the understanding of heredity, but these are subjects that can be difficult to understand among high school and undergraduate students. The aim of this study was to understand how Biology licentiate undergraduates from a public university of Brazil understand meiosis in the context of Mendelian genetics and whether their speeches indicate the presence of alternative conceptions. A class was analyzed in which students performed a discussion based on a meiosis diagramming task. To analyze the material, a priori categories were established based on alternative conceptions of meiosis often described in the literature. The results were analyzed, in order to assess why conceptual errors in this area of knowledge are persistent. The alternative conceptions that stood out in the analysis involved the connection of the replication process in meiosis with concepts of locus and ploidy. This points out a difficulty in relating cellular e molecular processes such as cell, chromosome, gene and DNA. Given the importance of teacher training, it is concluded that teachers should be aware of the importance of prospecting previous knowledge of undergraduates so to identify possible alternative conceptions and provide new didactic strategies to deal with the theme.