A great advancement in biotechnology has caused many different social, legal and ethical issues. It is necessary to provide chances of creative and rational thinking and solving problems on those issues to students, based on knowledge of bioethics. Th...
A great advancement in biotechnology has caused many different social, legal and ethical issues. It is necessary to provide chances of creative and rational thinking and solving problems on those issues to students, based on knowledge of bioethics. This study tries to provide a guide of detailed discussion teaching models for the purpose of easy application in school, designing them for effective learning on issues related to bioethics.
Under a subject, "The start of the life as a human and the research on cloning human stem cells", 5 discussion teachings were conducted. 2 teachings were conducted with present teachers. After adjustment and complement of them, next 3 teachings were proceeded with people preparing to be a teacher. In order to assess the result of the teachings, the small group discussion assessment table which I had made out under this study and the student evaluation sheets were made use of. For effective discussion teaching, there was application of more or less different teaching methods with complement in each 5 teaching.
I divided into 5-6 small groups by the numbers of attending students. Each group was assumed to be delegates preparing to attend "the UN General Assembly for establishing international agreements on human cloning". First of all, background knowledge was provided to student so that they can acquire basic information on discussion subject. In small group discussion, every student was able to attend actively, as each member took his partial charge. It was easy to assigning roles by showing the roles in advance. Also, I was able to prevent students from being discursive, as presenting the order of assembly in detail. Professional reading materials about "a point of view on respecting as a human" were given to the groups, and each group took different reading materials with different viewpoints for profound understanding of specific material among many materials. A questionnaire on reading materials was attached in order to help students to comprehend reading contents by degrees. Through small group discussion, each group made out their own national agreements. In entire discussion, "the UN General Assembly for establishing international agreements on human cloning", each nation's agreements were presented and discussed. The small group discussion in the fifth teaching, which was conducted in a web equipped lecture room, resulted in getting more rational ideas from students without limitation of time and space. In the third and forth teaching, self-assessment and peer-assessment after discussion were taken place for valuing discussion attitude of attender him/herself and their peer. From those assessments, their participation appeared to be high, and I was able to enhance validity and objectivity of assessment. On the base of the study, I lastly suggest a teaching guide for helping teachers to lead effective discussion teaching in school.