Uncertainty has always existed in the world and in human life, a fact brought recently into focus by events such as a global pandemic. Furthermore, uncertainty is necessarily part of scientific knowledge and scientific inquiry. Each research process starts with uncertainty in the meaning of an open question, of something we do not know (Kampourakis & McCain 2020). Sometimes this uncertainty is something we do not know yet, but we will be able to know in the future. Contrary to this epistemic uncertainty, there are phenomena that will remain uncertain in the meaning of an ontological uncertainty (Dewulf & Biesbroeck 2018).

In the context of science uncertainty can differentiated into so-called technical uncertainty that is related to the technical aspects of inquiry in terms of “measurement error, modeling approximations, and statistical assumptions” (Gustafson & Rice 2020, p. 618) and the so-called consensus uncertainty which can be described as “disagreement,” “conflict,” or “controversy” (ibid.) that can take place between “relevant stakeholders […] or within the body of evidence itself” (ibid.).
In the public uncertainty in the context of science is mostly conceptualized as a thread and its communication often has negative impact on the supposed trustworthiness of scientific results (Han et al. 2018). For the context of science education this negative impact is a challenge, since we live in what Beck (2020 [1986]) has called a risk society, education in general should prepare students to make informed decisions in complex and uncertain situations (Christensen & Fensham 2012). From this, one can argue that biology education should offer students learning opportunities about uncertainty in the context of science.

The second framework of this study is the idea of specific disciplinary cultures framing each learning opportunity in class. Lüders (2007) defines a disciplinary culture in the context of schools with references to Higher Education as “a distinguishable, systematically connected context of patterns of thought, perception, and action that emerges from the interaction of various factors.” (ibid., p. 8; translated into English by B.L) A central aspect of her conceptualization is the concept of habitus by Bourdieu (1977), which is understood as “a subjective but not individual system of internalised structures, schemes of perception, conception, and action common to all members of the same group or class” (ibid, p.86).  

There is already a lot of research referring to the concept of habitus in general education, school pedagogy and teacher professionalization, i.e. focusing the institutional habitus (e.g. Cornbleth 2010) as well as the habitus of teachers (e.g. Bonnet et al. 2020; Helsper 2018). But by now, there is less research about subject learning (e.g. Heitmann et al. 2017) and none looking on the phenomenon of uncertainty in science education through the lens of disciplinary culture and its specific habitus.

Therefore, this paper investigates uncertainty in two secondary biology classrooms while dealing with bioethical questions with the following research questions:

(1) How does uncertainty occur in the context of teaching and learning about genetic engineering in biology classes?
(2) How do the students deal with the occurring uncertainty?

TThe data collection took place simultaneously in two biology classes of the 11th grades in the same secondary school. The topic of the 8-weeks-unit was genetic engineering and took place at the end of the first half of the school year. Designed as a Grounded Theory Study participant observations (including videography of the lessons) were combined with weekly guided interviews (with 10 out of 47 students). The guideline was based on the structure of the problem-centered interview (Witzel & Reiter 2012). Referring to the microgenetic approach (Brock & Taber 2017), weekly retrospective interviews were conducted with ten students about their experiences of and reflections on the previous biology lesson. A total of 36 interviews (30 minutes on average) and 27 videos of students group works during class (20 minutes on average) where analyzed. The combination of videography of the lessons and retrospective interviews with the students allows an analysis on two levels: First the level of classroom practices and second the level of reflection on the lessons and their experiences by the students. The analyses of this multi-case-study (Yin 2014) followed the coding steps and evaluation procedures (memos, theoretical sensitization, comparisons, coding paradigm) of the Grounded Theory according to Corbin and Strauss (2015). Coding continued until - in the sense of theoretical saturation - no new categories were found in the data material. In order to identify moments of uncertainty and how students dealt with them in the data, uncertainty was defined as the questioning of something when a phenomenon or object that initially seemed unambiguous becomes ambiguous. Data analysis revealed that this moment is always accompanied by a (sometimes very brief) interruption in the students' flow of action, as they have no prior knowledge or routine to resolve the uncertainty immediately. The results are presented according to the central categories of the coding paradigm in axial coding. The interpretation of the results with theories about a disciplinary culture of biology represents the result of selective coding.

The results, contrary to what was planned at the beginning of the study, thus do not focus on the students' uncertainty on the content level of the subject matter. Rather, it becomes clear that the central phenomenon in the present data concerning the uncertainty the students' were confronted with is related to the norms of biology class. The moments of uncertainty conceptualized as questioning something, can be divided into (1) questioning norms of action (interaction and decision making) and (2) questioning the (successful) fulfillment of norms by the students. The questioning of the norm fulfillment is shown in the data in the experience of moments of not-being-able-to-finish and not-being-able-to-do-it-right. From the reconstructed uncertainty, students' conceptions of the objects of biology class as well as its goals and adequate modes of action can be derived as the following: Assuming a stable collective biological knowledge, the goal of the lesson is to overcome an individual non-knowing. For this purpose, students can use individual thinking, reproduction and decision-making processes as well as asking questions to the teachers. The (fast) presentation of an answer (in the mode of reproducing already existing biological knowledge) is evidence for a successful achievement of the goal. Already at this point, the results indicate a tension between the norms of the students and the norms of the teaching unit as well as the curriculum. In accordance with the principles of Grounded Theory, to be open to surprising results and to give priority to the data over theoretical presuppositions, the presented results will focus on uncertainty, which is related to the norms of biology class. Therefore, the norms of biology class derived from the results were considered in more detail and will be discussed in the lights of habitus and theories about disciplinary cultures.

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