BIOTECHNOLOGIES AS A CONTEXT FOR
ENHANCING STUDENTS ABILITY TO ASK
MEANINGFUL QUESTIONS ABOUT
ABSTRACT BIOLOGICAL PROCESSES
Dr. GILA OLSHER
E-mail: orgil@beitberl.ac.il
RONIT YEDIDSION
E-mail: ronidor@beitberl.ac.il
Beit berl college, school of education, doar beit berl
44905, Israel
 Copyright: by Dr Gila Olsher
“OSTENTION”
Showing
HUMAN
INTERVENTION
“BLACK BOX”
 THE
BIOTECHNOLOGY
INTERVENING
FACTORS
A MICRO-LEVEL
PROCESS
MACRO
-LEVEL
CONCRETE
OUTCOMES
NOT USABLE AS A
BASIS FOR
UNDERSTANDING
conclusion
Questions concerning the
SOCIAL ASPECTS OF
MODERN TECHNOLOGY
Questions concerning the
 NATURE OF
PROCESS INSIDE
THE BLACK BOX
 Copyright: by Dr Gila Olsher
“The Milky Way”
“OSTENTION”
(HUMAN
INTERVENTION)
A KIND
OF
BACTERIA
Showing
THE BIOTECHNOLOGY
(A MICRO-LEVEL
PROCESS)
(INTERVENING
FACTORS)
BACTERIA
TEMPERATURE
AND
MILK
(MACRO
-LEVEL)
yogurt
Examples of
Questions
“Are the bacteria in sour milk
dangerous to human beings?”
 Copyright: by Dr Gila Olsher
“Biotechnology and Genetic
Engineering”
“OSTENTION”
(HUMAN
INTERVENTION)
Showing
Micro-organisms
(MACRO
THE BIOTECHNOLOGY
(A MICRO-LEVEL
PROCESS)
(INTERVENING
FACTORS)
Human gene:
Growth Hormone
BACTERIA
-LEVEL)
GROWTH
HORMONE
Enzymes’ proteins
AND
HUMAN GENS
Examples of
Questions
When we take a drug, is it
an intervention in our body?”
 Copyright: by Dr Gila Olsher
“Single-Cell Protein”
“OSTENTION”
(HUMAN
INTERVENTION)
Single-cell fungi
growing on
Inexpensive
food substrate
Showing
(MACRO
-LEVEL)
THE BIOTECHNOLOGY
(A MICRO-LEVEL
PROCESS)
(INTERVENING
FACTORS)
Temperature
Ph
RichProteins
food
Single-cell fungi
+
Food substrate
Examples
of questions
“Could protein from fungi be dangerous to human beings?”
“Why do we need to produce proteins from fungi?”  Copyright: by Dr Gila
Biotechnology
They are called
biotechnologies,
because they exploit the
capacity of various living
organisms to synthesize
products which are
useful to humankind
(Bull, 1982; Marx, 1989).
 Copyright: by Dr Gila Olsher
Ostension
Millar (1990) proposes the teaching or “presentation” of
scientific principles by “ostention”, which means, literally,
by “showing”. He claims that the teaching method, instead
of dealing with proofs for the existence of any abstract
theory based on the molecular level, should show the
“theory in action”.
The main hypothesis of this study is that the “ostention”
approach may offer a solution to the everlasting conflict
between, on one hand, the necessity, as mentioned above,
to teach meaningfully some concepts the young students
must be supplied with, as an essential part of their scientific
literacy, and on the other hand, the apparent impossibility to
do so, because the students lack the necessary scientific
background.
 Copyright: by Dr Gila Olsher
“theory in action”
By showing these processes “in action”, the teaching
method can bring the students to a state where they can
ask meaningful questions, raise meaningful problems and
understand answers concerning the nature of events
which “must have occurred” in the black box, and their
importance to the living organism. This is the heart of the
matter: when the “ostention” approach is used in the
context of biotechnologies, meaningful learning of
biological processes may result in the generation
of questions, or hypotheses, about the biological
function and implications of observed phenomena,
and not anymore to the learning of esoteric
biochemical details.
 Copyright: by Dr Gila Olsher
The modules
Three modules were developed, each of them
describing a human intervention into an
important natural process, and its outcomes. All
the modules were designed along the same
pattern. the three modules called:
“The Milky Way”
“Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering”
“Single-Cell Protein”
 Copyright: by Dr Gila Olsher
The first module:
The Milky Way
“The Milky Way”,
is
a type of
traditional,
“cottage
industry”
intervention, that has been known for
hundreds of years and does not require
any
sophisticated equipment: the
production of yogurt. In this module,
the students could and did perform
simple experiments.
 Copyright: by Dr Gila Olsher
second module:
“Biotechnology
and Genetic Engineering”
The technology involved in the second module, was,
contrast, extremely modern.
by
The students were confronted with a problem of a medical
type: children with growth hormone deficiency. This module
emphasized value-laden social and moral issues.
 Copyright: by Dr Gila Olsher
The third module:
“Single-Cell Protein”
The third module,“Single-Cell
Protein”, belonged to the domain
of the industrial – not the
agricultural -- production of food:
the production of rich-protein food
using single-cell fungi, which,
when growing on an inexpensive
food substrate, convert it into
proteins of high biological value.
The module stressed important
economic and social issues.
 Copyright: by Dr Gila Olsher
The main categories of the
questions asked by the students
Category A: Questions Not related to the contents of
the black-box
Category B: Questions which were directly related to
the contents of the black-box:
Category C: These questions were relevant to the
process and deal with its human and social aspects of the
uses of biotechnologies.
In this presentation we are dealing only with questions
from the three modules which refer to categories B
and C specifically.
 Copyright: by Dr Gila Olsher
Questions from the “Milky way” activity:
1. “What do bacteria eat, the sugar?”
2. “Which matter do the bacteria utilize in the milk?”
3. “Are the bacteria which make the milk sour specific to
milk?”
4. “Are bacteria able to break down proteins?”
5. “Is the process of souring the milk useful to the bacteria?”
6. “Why is it that different methods yield different tastes?”
7.
“When does the process stop? By itself or do we insert
bacteria which stop the other bacteria?”
8. “Why does the milk become sour outside and not in the
refrigerator?”.
Questions from the “genetic engineering” activity:
1. “Why is it impossible to insert the genetic code into a
man, when it can be done with bacteria?”
2. “How does it happen that a man does not produce a
certain hormone?”
3. “How are desirable traits transmitted from
generation to generation?”.
 Copyright: by Dr Gila Olsher
Questions from the “single-cell protein” activity:
1. “Why do fungi produce rich proteins?”
2. “How is it possible that a small primitive being as a
micro-organism makes a richer protein than men?”
3. “Is the rich protein produced by the fungi an
excretion, or is it the matter which builds their body?”
4. “How long is a generation of fungi?”
5. “If there is an increment in the mass of fungi, where
does the new matter come from?”
 Copyright: by Dr Gila Olsher
conclusion
A main achievement of this study was to expose
student teachers to the unusual teaching
strategy of questioning which enables junior high
school students to overcome the understanding
gap of abstract Micro level biological processes.
It is clear that, given the rudimentary knowledge
of the junior high school students of microbiology or biochemistry, the number of questions
that could be asked in the category described
above as “black box” was limited (Olsher &
Dreyfus 1999). It is natural that the students
should ask more questions in the social
category. Even few meaningful questions in the
black box category represent a tangible
achievement.
 Copyright: by Dr Gila Olsher
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