Global Journal of Human Social Science, G: Linguistics and Education, Volume 21 Issue 14

© 2021 Global Journals Volume XXI Issue XIV Version I 21 ( G ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2021 Conceptions about Teaching DNA in Basic Education: A Reading based on Henri Atlan This way, we found that only 20% of teachers participating in this research can visualize the DNA as a data set that operates on functions of different cell situations, but only the relative percentage to 10% of these, present justifications for such an approach as, for example, what we call teacher 8: “I try to demonstrate that even the portion of DNA that is not part of a gene has or can have a future function”, that is, an understanding of DNA as a given, just like Henri Atlan (2003, 2006 and 2013), proposes in the study of the same. The teachers discourse, when considered collectively, it is a given data that obscures the phenomena of interrelations at different levels of activity. What we mean is that it is determinism rooted in positivism, even today, it is responsible for explaining the very phenomenon of life. This occurs in the teachers' discourse (although few still present conceptions of DNA as data), and they end up reinforcing this concept with the program approach, as well as in the adopted textbooks. We observe that teachers do not have a critical and reflective position to problematize and place this situation/condition at the center of controversies in the classroom. On the other hand, when we consider DNA within a systemic and complex approach, it naturally starts to dialogue with uncertainty and chance. DNA as a network structure is dynamic and at the same time contemplates order, disorder and self-organization, which means pointing to noise (Atlan, 2013). The noise considered from Shannon's Communications Theory is a random element, which includes a set of communicative meanings and provides new ways to arrive at an answer, according to Henri Atlan. This does not mean that we are denying determinism and the laws that govern science as a whole, but we want to point to a complex structure that must be considered in order to propose the construction of new knowledge. And, in particular for this research, in which we point out such terminologies discussed as appropriate for classroom work as with the concept of DNA. Inserting the concept of epigenetics as a branch of biology that “studies change in gene functions without changing the base sequences (adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine) of the DNA molecule” (Fantappie, 2013, p. 1) is one of the factors that will contribute to the systemic and complex design of DNA. Another factor to be considered is to include in the school contents of the biology textbooks, the study of the history and philosophy of science in relation to DNA studies, so that teachers understand how reductionist concepts change with new research in the field of Genetics and Molecular Biology, transforming a mechanistic-reductionist paradigm into a thought of complexity. VI. F inal C onsiderations The results of this research demonstrate the reductionist and genetic program vision when addressing DNA in the classroom with Basic Education students. Both the teaching material used by the teachers, in this case the textbook, as well as their discourses point to this path. After so much research in the area of Molecular Biology, Genetics and currently the knowledge of Epigenetics, it is necessary to review the contents of the textbook that refer to DNA, addressing the issue in a more complex and interrelated way, inserting the concept of “data” in approaching this molecule and avoiding DNA-RNA-protein linearity. We observe that such an approach is so common and that it leads to errors of cause-effect, part-whole and it is reproduced in the discourse of teachers in the classroom. Referring to the DNA as a set of data, the Didactic Transposition with their relationship between knowledge wise, learn to teach and taught knowledge forwards to include in the school knowledge research developed mainly in the last five decades. It is essential that the complex mechanisms of gene expression, which involve numerous studies of DNA, but also of RNA, proteins and the cellular environment that act in the phenotypic determination of genetic characteristics, be present in the school's curricula. According to Atlan (2013, p. 165) “until now, these phenomena of epigenetic heredity appear as anomalies or exceptions compared to the tendency of everything that relates to genetic determinations in the form of DNA sequences. Therefore, they are relatively little studied, even more as the necessary techniques are more complicated and less effective than those for cloning genes and their sequencing”. The above statement by Henri Atlan clarifies the data found in this study, demonstrating that teaching DNA as a program is simpler and easier to justify, while the introduction of epigenetic concepts treating DNA as a data set implies systemic knowledge from the authors of the textbooks to carry out the didactic transposition adequate to the theme, and it also demands from the biology teachers a continuing education so that the idea of DNA as a complex system is explicit in their classroom discourse. For Keller (2000) "the deterministic role of genes to produce traits may have been taken for granted by many, but their control, regulation and biological context at the cellular level was seen as interactive" and, therefore, complexity tests are essential for teachers to produce materials in an interactive and integrative DNA- cell perspective while, in the collective construction of knowledge, it enables students to understand the hologram of the cell. Therefore, inserting the complexity of scientific knowledge, understanding Biology and the study of life beyond disciplinary fragmentation, teaching