Science Continuum P-10

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Who Decides? (Vignette)

Progressing towards the Level 6 standard

The following vignette is reproduced with permission from Corrigan, Dillan & Gunstone (2007) The Re-Emergence of Values in Science, Sense Publishers: Rotterdam. 

Who decides?

Two teachers, Rebecca and Vojtech, have decided to run a unit with a Grade 9 science class centred around the idea of “Big Picture Science” (an idea that centres on thinking about the big ideas of science rather any specific content), with a particular focus on ethical issues in Science, Medicine and Technology and who makes the decisions about these ethical issues. After an initial prompt of a current television program (‘Gray’s Anatomy’ – Episode 6, Series 2 from ABC Network, USA) to start the process, students were asked to form groups and research answers to a series of questions based on assigned roles. For example, one role was a doctor where questions included ‘What is the Hippocratic Oath?’, ‘Who has the final say in a medical procedure?’ Another role was a pharmaceutical research scientist with consideration of questions such as ‘Do scientists have something like the Hippocratic Oath when they do research?’, ‘What laws might govern the type of research scientists can do?’, ‘Can scientists research whatever they wish?’, ‘What sort of procedures do scientists have to go through to be able to conduct human trials or tests on animals?’

Other roles included a representative of the government, a relative of the patient, a member of a “right to life” group. All roles had assigned questions to be researched as well as the requirement to find any real life examples from the media of the specific issues as these affected the role.

In setting up this project, Rebecca and Vojtech were exploring how both their knowledge and their teaching practice might develop (and what drives this development) over the course of the project as well as how students’ learning might be challenged, reshaped and enhanced. An important focus of the project is the level of decision making at two levels; firstly at the level of deciding on the work itself (the topic) and; secondly the work the students will do (their decision about how to do the task).

In gathering student responses as the unit was progressing, it became obvious that students felt the topic had meaning and was relevant to them. The content they were covering in this unit was to them clearly science, but the decision making that was required in their various roles was, the students believed, far beyond the boundaries of science.

After 4 weeks on the unit (1 double lesson a week on the unit, while “normal” science classes persisted for the other two lessons a week), Rebecca and Vojtech raised a number of questions on the blog about their experience with the unit.

These included:

Where does science fit into society? How much “say” does science have in issues that arise in society? How much credence is given to science when it comes to various aspects of society? How much of an influence does science have on the daily lives of people on our society? How relevant is science to the students’ daily lives? Have we given students the tools to make responsible decisions in the future? Have students made a link between the decision making and the presence of science? We’ve amalgamated science with ethics, legalities and politics but is there science in all of these areas? We haven’t emphasised that there is a link between decision making and science? Should we have made it more explicit? How do we get them to establish links between science and what they’re actually doing?

Not only have Rebecca and Vojtech been concerned about their teaching and the learning going on the classroom, they have also raised some issues related to their curriculum planning:

Can you run a science curriculum, at [Grade] 9, that is solely based around our Big Picture Science? Why wouldn’t we make this part of the science curriculum? We are thinking more and more that this is something that should be just like nay other topic. During this unit there has been no emphasis on content. The content has been left up to the students to explore. If you curriculum was like this for an entire year, would the link between science and society be more observable for the students?

This experience has led Rebecca and Vojtech to rethink their wn notions of science:

We feel that [the unit] is science simply because decisions are made in science and a large aspect to this [student] assignment [for this unit] was decision making. We view science as having two aspects; content and application. In terms of what is science and what we teach in science, we as teachers make a decision about what is science content and what is application. You could therefore teach a unit that is all content without necessarily considering the applications of the science within society. Do the students view science as all content? How familiar are students with the fact that science has content and a role in society? It is obvious that for student’s to appreciate science’s role in society that they need to be familiar with some scientific content. Thus we ask the question: Is teaching science’s role in society teaching science?