‘Should We Be Doing It, Should We Not Be Doing It, Who Could Be Harmed?’

Abstract

Many science educators have argued in favour of including socioscientific issues (SSI) in general, and ethical issues in particular, in school science. However, there have been a number of objections to this proposal, and it is widely acknowledged that such teaching places additional demands on science teachers. This study examined the curricula, textbooks and views of both student teachers and established teachers in England and in Germany regarding the teaching of ethical issues in secondary school science, particularly the ethical issues surrounding animal tests. Analysis of the curriculum documents for secondary or upper secondary school science showed that in both countries, ethical considerations feature strongly. However, in both countries, the overall treatments in the school textbooks of the ethical issues of animal testing were generally ‘thin’, and little opportunity was given for students to consider different ethical frameworks. The teacher and student teacher interviews revealed that interviewees generally gave ethical issues less emphasis than fundamental science. A number of interviewees referred to a lack of appropriate teaching material, and many of them also had concerns that such teaching could give rise to classroom management issues or that they might be accused of indoctrinating their students. Given the increasing acknowledgement of the need for school science to address so-called wicked socioscientific problems, these findings are a concern. We end with recommendations for curricula, for textbooks and for teacher education.

Students' engagement with Socioscientific issues: Use of sources of knowledge and attitudes

“…Moreover, the literature about SSI education has provided many examples of the effects of SSI‐based teaching (e.g., Sadler & Dawson, 2012), making SSI‐based teaching an important potential source of information about SSI for students. However, some studies have also reported school as a place of missed opportunities for learning about SSI (Connell et al, 1999; Garrecht et al, 2022; Lundström et al, 2012).…”

“…SSI-based teaching, as described in several available frameworks, often concerns long-or short-term projects around a focal SSI (e.g., Guérin, 2019;Levinson & The PARRISE Consortium, 2017;Sadler et al, 2017). SSI-based teaching is known to be challenging for teachers (e.g., Chen & Xiao, 2021;Garrecht et al, 2022). Teachers lack knowledge about SSI, feel uncertain about their own knowledge and skills to develop and teach SSI lessons, personally lack interest in SSI, or have other priorities.…”