We present a case study of a lesson that incorporates high school students’ interests in heredity alongside the
requirements of the curriculum. This was done by collecting students’ questions in advance and inserting them
in strategic places in the biology curriculum, thus creating a ‘shadow curriculum’. The idea underlying the lesson
plan is not to change the curriculum to suit students’ interests, but rather to use what students want to
know in order to teach them what the curriculum requires. The lesson included readings from a well-known
children’s book on twins that illustrates a range of complex behavioural and physical traits, a hands-on exercise
in which students externalised their thinking, a class discussion further problematising the study of the genetic
basis for complex traits and, finally, research-based responses on the role of environment and heredity in different
traits.

• Nature or nurture? A lesson incorporating students’ interests in a high-school biology class

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