Investigating the relationship between content Knowledge and the construction of ethical arguments on socioscientific issues. I
Date
2018ISBN
978-1-873769-84-3Publisher
Dublin City UniversityPlace of publication
Dublin, IrelandSource
Proceedings of the ESERA 2017 Conference. Research, Practice and Collaboration in Science Education, Part 8: Scientific Literacy and Socio Scientific IssuesPages
1031-1038Google Scholar check
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This study investigated the relationship between university students’ content knowledge and the construction of ethical arguments on socio-scientific issues (SSIs). Particularly, we investigated whether university students' content knowledge about value-laden, controversial SSIs, predict the number and the quality of ethical arguments that they construct. We focus particularly on this possible relationship because we hypothesized that the content knowledge could promote the ability of students to recognize when a situation, such as SSI, contains a moral aspect and be aware of how possible resolutions of the situation have the potential to affect others in a negative manner and construct relevant ethical arguments. 240 university students were asked to construct different types of supportive arguments − social, ethical, economic, scientific and others, − as well as counterarguments and rebuttals after they had read a scenario on a value-laden SSI. Participants’ content knowledge was assessed separately. Results show that university students' content knowledge predict students’ number and quality of ethical arguments that they construct on value-laden SSIs, but differences in the predictability of the content knowledge about SSIs were found. That indicates context dependence. Additional research is needed that can robustly describe the relationship between content knowledge and ethical arguments on value-laden SSIs. We discuss the significance and the educational implications of these findings.