Mental Models of Proteins and Amino Acids Observed in Students in Higher Education

Abstract

Molecular Biology and Biotechnology are part of the curriculum of basic education and are present in everyday life of students in situations that involve their thinking and decision making. The explanations of some phenomena and processes related to these themes are almost always in atomic and molecular level, described and explained with scientific models or through representations. In light of the Theory of Mental Models of Johnson-Laird some people reason with images, using them in their models, while others find it difficult to infer the three dimensional structure from two-dimensional figures, such as those used in textbooks or projected on screens. In this context it is proposed to raise the mental models and/or representations that students in higher education have on proteins and amino acids. For this purpose, we interviewed thirteen students, four from the course of Licenciatura em Ciencias Exatas and nine from Bacharelado em Ciencias Fisicas e Biomoleculares (USP). Three basic types of mental models of proteins have been detected: the two-dimensional (15%), the three-dimensional (38.5%) and a transition between these two types (38.5%). With respect to amino acids, the following types of models were identified: the two-dimensional (38.5%), the three-dimensional (8%) and the atomic (23%). These data show the restricted way that situations of teaching and learning on this topic have been conducted in higher education and point to the use of teaching methods and educational resources that allow three-dimensional visualization of these organic molecules, such as the use of tactile models, for understanding of these concepts.