Debate activity - ethical issues in science

Activity Rationale

Ethical understanding is a general capability listed within the Victorian Curriculum, and this activity provides the opportunity for students to consider ethics in science.

Building ethical understanding throughout all stages of schooling will assist students to engage with the more complex issues that they are likely to encounter in the future, and to navigate a world of competing values, rights, interests and norms. As students engage with the elements of ethical understanding in an integrated way, they learn to recognise the complexity of many ethical issues. (VCAA, 2019).

Reasoning is central to developing ethical capability and provides a way to structure competing considerations and manage judgements (VCAA, 2019).

This activity aims to develop students critical thinking skills through engagement with current contemporary and exciting science. This activity will give them an understanding of the complexity of many ethical issues that are considered and debated within the science community.

Curriculum links

Science Inquiry Skills - Communicate scientific ideas and information for a particular purpose, including constructing evidence-based arguments and using appropriate scientific language, conventions and representations (VCSIS140)

Science As a Human Endeavor - The values and needs of contemporary society can influence the focus of scientific research (VCSSU116)

General Capabilities – Ethical Understanding

How you can use this activity

This activity is ideal for a standard 50 minute lesson. It can be used in conjunction with other Baw Baw frog activities on this site, or as a stand alone activity to develop critical thinking, public speaking and group work skills.

What you need for the activity

All instructions and resources for this activity are found on this page.

You will need:

Smartboard or other device to show the video below
Print outs of the student resource

Video for Activity

In this video, Tom describes the process of submitting research a proposal to an ethics committee

Teacher guide

Student resource

Assessment

This activity gives plenty of opportunity for you to formatively assess student progress and skill development verbally throughout the lesson. However, if you would like to give more formal feedback or written feedback to individual students, you can download the activity rubric here.