Planning a classroom programme

As the teachers and their colleagues had been trialling a science unit on fire, they agreed that it made sense to have the ethics content related to fire for the purposes of the research lessons. After some discussion they identified four issues:

 Should farmers be able to burn off their own land?

 Should people be allowed to incinerate their own rubbish?

 Should there be restrictions on what may be burned in household fires (e.g., should people be allowed to burn nappies)?

 Should people be allowed fireplaces – when considering global warming?

The researcher had observed experimental burnings of furniture with and without chemical fire retardants and had talked with scientists who work in this field at the University of Canterbury. This was shared with the teachers. Some of the resources (worksheets) had been designed with this issue – of using chemical fire retardants – in mind, although it was not intended to specifically direct teachers towards this as an issue. However, after a discussion around chemical fire retardants the teachers wanted to explore this issue, particularly because it was “so new and we want all the help we can get”. In retrospect, Anton and Amy felt that the ethics concerning chemical fire retardants would not have been an issue they would have taught in terms of being of real ‘personal’ interest to the students (see Section 5.5.1.5).

Having established a context (fire) and an ethical issue (whether chemical fire retardants should be used in furniture), the teachers worked through what they might write in their planners. Science curriculum links were identified and discussed. The teachers identified the ‘material world’ as

the appropriate strand for the context. They then agreed on the following two Level 3 and 4 objectives:

 compare chemical and physical changes. Compare the effects of chemical retardants in materials when burning with those without; and

 relate chemical fire retardants to their technological uses in society. The objectives related to the overarching nature of science strand, and particularly pertinent to the lessons, were for the students to:

 use their growing knowledge when considering issues of concern to them; and

 explore various aspects of this issue (the use of chemical fire retardants in furniture) and make decisions about possible actions.

The teachers then discussed what relevant science knowledge the students would need in order to explore this issue. Some of the comments were:

They would need to know about the chemicals What they [chemicals] are made up of

What they [chemicals] do

What effect they [chemicals] have when burning How does smoke work?

How does smoke affect us?

What are the benefits of the chemicals? Why have them [chemicals]?

Discussing these raised issues around some of the fire concepts, for example: Smoke is confusing me right now. Is smoke a result of not having one of the three things [fuel, oxygen, heat] you need for a complete fire - because when you put it out you’re taking one away aren’t you and that leaves smoke?

Smoke is the result of unburnt particles From lack of oxygen

The more [oxygen] you get the more it becomes a blue flame doesn’t it?

Smoke is because there is insufficient combustion going on - means it’s not burning clean. You have unburnt particles. There are all sorts

Is a candle creating methane gas?

No, it creates a paraffin gas from the wax. Gas heaters use methane gas Oh, is that why you don’t get smoke in gas heaters?

This highlights the importance of teacher knowledge. The teachers were also grappling with new ethics ideas. They revisited the ethical approaches and suggested consequences, rights and responsibilities and autonomy as possible approaches for this issue. They decided that consequences would be the more relevant in this case, followed by rights and responsibilities and autonomy (“concerning peoples’ rights about what kind of furniture they have”). The teachers appreciated that the noisy round robin activity could be used to explore consequentialism. After some discussion, the teachers commented they would be able to “get a good debate going” with this issue.

There was a sense of hestitation as the discussion came to a close, the teachers asking, “So now do we have to go and write our own [plan]?” The researcher responded by briefly reiterating what they needed to write under each heading in the blank planner. It was suggested that bullet points could be used for relevant science knowledge to help limit writing.

The teachers were not given copies of the power point examples that were made in collaboration because the researcher did not want the teachers to transfer the ideas discussed straight into their planners. She wanted the teachers to consider each box again – to see if it could be understood and logically followed by each individual teacher. Also, not filling in the boxes immediately might give the teachers the freedom to change to a different issue should they wish to. However, the teachers did keep a copy of the takahe example, demonstrating the use of the ethics-in-science planner for a different ethical issue.

4.5 CHAPTER SUMMARY

This chapter reported on two teacher development sessions teachers participated in before they explored ethics their science programmes. During these sessions, teachers were introduced to ethics, ethics approaches, and planning and teaching ethics in science. The teachers were introduced to a prototype planner for teaching ethics in science during the first session. This was discussed and information from this discussion was used in conjunction with work done by Cowie, Moreland, et al. (2008) to produce a modified version of the classroom planner for teaching ethics in science (Table 4.4), the ethics-in-science planner, which was presented to the teachers in the second teacher development session. The individual components were discussed in light of an example, ‘Should money and effort be spent understanding and saving the takahe?’.

For this research, the teachers discussed and agreed to use an ethics issue related to their current science unit on fire – should fire retardant chemicals be used in furniture? Planning for this issue was also discussed and the teachers collaborated on how this might best be done. The following chapter reports on the findings from each of the three classroom programmes, presented as three case studies. A cross-case analysis then explores common themes that emerged from these case studies.

Chapter 5

Classroom findings

5.1 INTRODUCTION

Chapter 4 describes how Lynda, Amy and Anton explored the teaching of ethics in science through two teacher development sessions. The support included a classroom ethics-in-science planner to help the teachers plan and trial an ethics in science unit. This chapter reports on the classroom programmes that were developed and implemented. Data were collected through classroom observations, surveys, teacher discussions and interviews (see Section 3.5).

Lynda, Amy and Anton (see Section 3.6.1) taught mixed ability classes of Year 5/6 students at a decile 9 inner city primary school. The classes had been studying the chemistry of fire in their science unit prior to exploring ethical issues relating to the use of chemical fire retardants in furniture.

Individual classroom programmes are presented below as three separate case studies.

This is followed by a discussion of the key themes in a cross-case analysis of the classroom trials. The themes include how teachers explored ethical perspectives in science, student learning and teacher development (including their use of the ethics-in-science planner).