Values in Science Education by Deborah Corrigan & Cathy Buntting & Angela Fitzgerald & Alister Jones

Author:Deborah Corrigan & Cathy Buntting & Angela Fitzgerald & Alister Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030421724
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

A Futures Thinking Toolkit

Futures thinking involves a structured exploration into how society and its physical and cultural environment could be shaped in the future, usually through developing possible, probable and preferable scenarios. Such explorations are premised on the following principles: the future world will likely differ in many respects from the present world; the future is not fixed, but consists of a variety of alternatives; people are responsible for choosing between alternatives; and small changes can become major changes over time (Cornish, 1977). Choosing between alternatives and then working towards a preferred future is clearly values-laden.

Once again, biotechnology provides a rich context for helping students to develop their futures thinking skills alongside their understandings of the nature and processes of science and technology. One study in which we explored the potential for biotechnology contexts to engage students in futures thinking used examples from carefully selected science fiction movies as powerful and engaging entry points into the learning (Buntting & Jones, 2015a). For example, the movie GATTACA, although released in 1997, continues to provide an accessible portrayal of a future society driven by eugenics enabled by pre-birth genetic selection, exploring issues associated with genetic discrimination and providing tangible examples of how contemporary and future genetic understanding might be applied. The 2000 movie The 6th Day is set some time in a future when cloning of animals and human organs is routine but the cloning of entire humans is prohibited. However, the accidental cloning of the protagonist and subsequent threats on his ‘first life’ raise issues around identity, genetic ownership, rights of clones, immortality, use and abuse of genetic information, extremism, and the legal control and policing of new technologies . Note, though, that the ‘science’ represented in the movie is very different to the actual techniques currently being used (somatic cell nuclear transfer and induced pluripotency)—providing opportunities to explore the science of cloning, and why fictional processes were introduced in the movie.

The futures thinking toolkit available on the Science Learning Hub is designed to help scaffold students’ exploration of future issues, and to support them to develop and evaluate a variety of evidence-based scenarios. The toolkit draws on work by Jones et al. (2012) in which five elements are considered as part of the scenario development:understanding the current situation,

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