Beyond Mendel, LLC

How can a genetics education that never moves beyond Mendel reinforce essentialist beliefs?

When genetics instruction stops at Mendel — single genes, simple inheritance, one gene one trait — it leaves students with an incomplete picture of how genetics works. That incomplete picture has consequences. It predisposes students to believe that racial groups are genetically discrete and internally uniform: that the differences between groups are large and that the variation within groups is small.

Does instruction about single-gene inheritance — Mendelism — make essentialist beliefs worse?

A field experiment showing that racially framed Mendelian instruction raised students’ belief in essentialism over 90 days.

How does a strong foundation in genomics beyond Mendel interact with humane genomics education to affect essentialism?

The 2019 studies showed that humane genomics instruction works to reduce belief in genetic essentialism.

How does humane genomics education create a cognitive change in the minds of students?

Humane genomics instruction works at scale and shifts a variety of racial beliefs.

What does the instruction actually look like — and why does it produce these effects?

The five studies above document that humane genomics instruction works, for whom it works best, and through which cognitive pathways.