1 Factors explaining students’ attitudes towards learning in genetics and belief in genetic determinism 2 3 Tuomas Aivelo1,*, Anna Uitto2 4 1: Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki 5 2: Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki 6 * Corresponding author:
[email protected] 7 STUDENT ATTITUDES ON GENETICS 8 Abstract 9 It is important to know how current education affects students’ attitudes towards learning, 10 specifically in a quickly evolving and societally relevant field of biology such as genetics. The aim 11 of this study is to examine how teacher and student-related factors explain secondary school 12 students’ attitudes towards the applications of genetics and learning in genetics. In total 421 13 students aged between 17 and 20 from ten schools participated in the study. We measured students’ 14 liking of, self-concept in and experienced utility of genetics and students’ attitude towards gene 15 technology and belief in genetic determinism. We carried out item response theory based modelling 16 by including teachers’ teaching emphases, learning materials, student gender and the number of 17 attended biology courses as explanatory variables. The attitude towards gene technology and belief 18 in genetic determinism correlated with all independent factors. Male students’ attitude towards gene 19 technology was more liberal; they had higher self-concept, but experienced less utility in genetics 20 and their belief in genetic determinism was weaker than in women. If the teacher’s emphasis was on 21 Heredity or if the textbook with stronger Mendelian emphasis was used in teaching, students had 22 more negative attitudes towards learning in genetics, but the belief in genetic determinism was 23 stronger.