How might authentic scientific experiences promote an understanding of genetics in high school?

The importance of promoting genetics understanding in high-school students lies in enabling them, as future citizens, to think critically and make informed decisions regarding genetics-related issues. Students should know how genetics knowledge has been acquired and its applications to societal issues. However, high-school students rarely have access to current technologies and practices used in genetic research; therefore, their opportunities to be exposed to the way genetics knowledge is gained and applied today are limited. One way to provide these opportunities is through authentic scientific experiences practiced in schools, i.e., experiences that are as similar as possible to the way science is practiced by scientists. This chapter reviews the characteristics of authentic scientific experiences and examples of authentic science experiences in genetics that have been practiced in high schools: hands-on experiments, student–teacher–scientist partnership, design-based learning, use of bioinformatics tools, and learning with adapted primary literature. Each example is related to a different research context in which genetic concepts are applied. Through these examples, we demonstrate the benefits of authentic scientific experiences to genetics learning. The challenges in implementing authentic experiences in genetics in high school, and the role of scientists in the process of developing and carrying them out are discussed.