Beyond Punnett squares: Revising the Canadian genetics curriculum to meaningfully introduce social and ethical perspectives

Abstract

In 2015, the Genetics Society of America published a learning framework based on Vision and Change. One of many core competencies was that “Students should be able to identify and critique scientific issues relating to society or ethics.” Unfortunately, no links to other core concepts were provided to help instructors integrate this core competency into the genetics curriculum, and no key issues were identified or discussed. Traditional genetics concepts raise many unresolved ethical issues (Gouvea, 2022; Visintainer, 2022) and new genome-editing technologies amplify the need to incorporate social and ethical perspectives in the genetics curriculum. A few exercises that touch on social and ethical perspectives in genetics have been made available through CourseSource, but these are mostly superficial and difficult to integrate into the existing curriculum. Moreover, little work has been published on the curriculum for Canadian introductory genetics courses in higher education. To address this deficiency, we conducted a document analysis of syllabi for introductory genetics courses across all provinces and territories. Only 15% of these syllabi touch on social and ethical perspectives. Through interviews of students and instructors in courses across Canada, we are exploring how these perspectives have been integrated into the curriculum. We will share the themes emerging through our interviews, and invite attendees to consider alignment with their own pedagogical contexts. We will share our work to build a database of strategies to integrate social and ethical perspectives in introductory genetics courses across Canada. This study was performed with ethics approval