"DNA Dreams": Behavior Genetics and the Reinscription of Biodeterminism in Education

• In Event: Dystopian DNA? Public Education, Genetics, and the Popular Imagination

Abstract

Overview and Objectives
Behavior genetics argues intelligence and educational attainment are highly heritable (genetically influenced) and polygenic (influenced by many genes) traits (Benyamin et al, 2014; Plomin & Deary, 2014). Researchers in this field have moved beyond identifying whether and how much genes influence a given outcome (Plomin et al, 2013) to trying to pinpoint the genetic markers that help predict them (Rietveld et al, 2014; Sniekers et al, 2017). In more recent years, behavior genetics research and biosocial arguments have attempted to cross-over into the field of education, looking to play a role in the construction of policy and the implementation of curriculum (Asbury & Plomin, 2013; Kovas et al, 2016; Stanford University CEPAS, 2015; Thomas et al, 2015).

This paper, therefore, explores the threats and ethical dilemmas behavior genetics research poses to equitable public education with particular regard to the ways in which it might shape approaches to and understandings of racial and socioeconomic disparities in the US education system. It seeks to answer: How might behavior genetics research shift conceptualizations of and approaches to social inequality and inform oppressive structures that inhibit the most marginalized students from receiving equitable quality public education?

Theoretical Framework and Data Sources
This paper utilizes a mixed-methods approach that draws upon biopower and intersectional frameworks to examine teacher perspectives on genetics in relation to intelligence, race, and class. In assessing a survey of American educators and analyzing localized focus groups in two ethnically and socioeconomically contrasting schools, this paper illuminates how behavior genetics research might reinforce fixed conceptualizations of student ability within an education system tainted by socioeconomic and racial disparities—one that has an ugly history of using Science to justify racial and socioeconomic inequalities in education (Jensen, 1991; Shockley, 1972) and which tends to view the development and marketization of IQ tests as “color-blind” and “objective estimate[s] of intellectual ability” (Eysenck, 1998:10). Given this history, genetics research can serve as a mode of regulating the politics of race, class, equity, and education

Scholarly Significance
Teacher perceptions of a student have been shown to impact that child’s academic achievement and likelihood of being referred for gifted education or, alternatively, special education (Blanchett, 2006; Elhoweris et al, 2005), environments in which low-income and ethnic minorities are disproportionately under and overrepresented respectively. While previous research has examined teacher conceptualizations of intelligence (Fry, 1984; Walker & Plomin, 2005) and the role these conceptualizations play in educators’ preferred teaching practices and educational goals (Lee, 1996; Lynott & Woolfolk, 1994), this paper addresses a gap in the literature by exploring how teachers might respond to growing developments in the field of behavior genetics, particularly as it relates to the ways in which racial and socioeconomic disparities are understood and addressed. In doing so, it offers a window into the ways in which democratic education is undermined by a particular branch of Science shaping race, genetics and education, a field dominated by empiricism and objectivity but often seen by its creators as ‘outside of politics’.

Author

• Daphne Martschenko, University of Cambridge