ethics in schools enhancing student employability through ethics-themed schools outreach activities...
TRANSCRIPT
Ethics in SchoolsEnhancing student employability through ethics-themed schools
outreach activities and open educational resources
Dr Dave [email protected]
Institute of Membrane & Systems BiologyFACULTY OF BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Ethics, employability & National curriculum
• Ethics in the GCSE/GCE curriculum – “How Science works”
• Employers and employability skills
• Taught & extracurricular engagement activities “Science and Society” final year research projects Undergraduate internships
“Science & Society” projects
• Interactive, curriculum enhancing teaching session Animal Experiments: Cruel and Unnecessary? Playing God: Use and abuse of human genetic information Olympics special: performance enhancing drugs Creating super humans: Curing disease or enhancing
performance? Other non-ethics topics
Animal experiments: Cruel or necessary
Playing God
• Who thinks that this method is good?• Would you choose to prevent a disability in
your child?• Would you choose to abort your child because
it was disabled?
Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD)
Ethical Sportsman
Healthy hearts
“Science & Society” projects
• Interactive, curriculum enhancing teaching session
• Primary or secondary
• Carousel and/or National Science Week
• Focus groups & evaluation
• Assessment & academic equivalence
• Guidance
Student reflections pre-session
“Will undoubtedly have challenges…… KS4 pupils can be disruptive and unenthusiastic when faced with a ‘science lecture’…… many interesting and easily relatable aspects to engage…… interactive as possible……. level of detail required to make my presentation educational without overpowering the pupils........ Effective time management and a thorough plan.
Students reflections afterwards
“seriously doubt that an educational development or science and society could provide the same intellectual stresses and challenges as a lab based project”
“should treat these alternative project topics with a great deal of caution, irrespective of whether the students "want" this sort of thing”
“having marked Education/Science and Society projects in the last 2 years they do have the same potential for intellectual input/analysis as lab based projects”
Colleagues
External Examiners
Feedback: Colleagues & external examiners
“A truly exceptional project, a delight to read”
“Love to host again next year, because of the great impression this year's cohort made”
Feedback: Schools
Extra-curricular engagement: Internships
• Educational research or curriculum development
• Public engagement Faculty public engagement database Sixth Form conference Effectiveness of Faculty WP activities
Ethics in schoolso Website vs. Open Educational Resourceso Biomedical topicso Wikio Re-purposing Science and Society projects
“Ethics in Schools” OER
Internships: Student reflections
Projects, internships & OERs
• Student Curricular & extracurricular opportunities for public
engagement Academically equivalent Employability skills
• Links with local / other schools
• Promoting science
• Excellent feedback
• High demand
Projects, internships & OERs
• Practicalities, barriers and benefits
• Academic standards and equivalence to other Final Year research projects
• Transferability or otherwise to other disciplines or Institutions
• Impact compared to other means of engaging young people
• Suggestions for development/expansion
Questions to think about:
Further details. Email [email protected]