| Budget Amount *help |
¥2,300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,300,000)
Fiscal Year 1991: ¥300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥300,000)
Fiscal Year 1990: ¥2,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,000,000)
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| Research Abstract |
This study was carried out aiming to reveal the historical details in introducing genetics into the subject matters and to improve experiments in genetics of biology in Japanese secondary schools.
The historical data regarding secondary school genetics education were collected from research journals, biology textbooks, syllabi, and license examination paper for secondary school biology teachers enforced by the Ministry of Education of Japan. As a result of this survey, the researcher was able to find out that the Japanese history of genetics education can be summarized as follows. 1) In 1913 Mendels law was set for the first time in botany license examination. 2) In 1914 there appeared the first genetic subject matters in a textbook entitled "Hakubutsu-Tsuuron (An introduction to natural history) ", and then a few years later many other textbooks had been adopted for this subject. 3) In the definition of Mendels law, there existed some confusion between Mendels law and his experimental
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data. This confusion has been inherited even in some of the updated textbooks. 4) It is concluded presently that Mendels experiments does not only show the value of his conclusions but also of the methods of inquiry which are suggestive in school education. These methods are considered rather more important than Mendels law itself in school biology.
Some plant materials such as the hybrid sweet corn, which segregates yellow and white seeds, and soybean strain T219, which segregates green and yellow offspring, were tested for confirming the Mendelian segregation rate. In each plant, the experimental data was found out to fit quite well in understanding the concept of theoretical ratio. However, the genotype of sweet corn could be considered to be rather difficult to maintain when compared to soybean. Soybean was found to be useful to confirm not only the segregation rate concept but also the incomplete dominance and the lethal gene concepts. Therefore soybean T219 is thought of as a very good plant material for student experiment. Less
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