Assessing learning about bioethical issues: a case study
Lindsey Conner Christchurch College of Education P. O. Box 31 065 Christchurch 8030 New Zealand [email protected]
Keywords: assessment, ethical issues, social issues, evaluation.
Abstract
Learning about bioethical issues
In New Zealand, there has been a focus on learning about bioethical issues in
formal schooling for the last 15 years because of the economic importance and
implications of the use of biotechnologies in our society. The New Zealand
Government’s Biotechnology Strategy (Ministry of Research in Science and
Technology, 2005) indicates that existing and future biotechnologies include:
health and wellbeing, primary production, industry and environment, and security
and defence. This strategy document also recognises that there is a need to raise
issues with society, to build understanding of diverse perspectives, and for our
people to have regard for ethical and cultural concerns. One of the perceived ways
of doing this is educating people through the formal school system. Therefore in
New Zealand bioethical issues are included in both the science and technology
curriculums (Conner, 2000). The types of bioethical issues discussed in New
Zealand schools includes health treatments and associated technologies (including
genetic screening and reproductive technologies), genetic modification of primary
products, future foods, industry and conservation, and uses for security and
defence.
1. an appreciation that there are areas of science and technology which
involve ethical problems and issues of social responsibility;
2. an appreciation that a sound knowledge and understanding of facts and principles are the basis of understanding these issues;
3. an appreciation that solutions to ethical problems are culturally
determined;
4. skills in analyzing situations involving ethical conflicts and in evaluating
the benefits and disadvantages arising from alternative decisions;
5. the ability to find a range of solutions and recommend one that could be
tolerated by the greatest number of people involved and
6. an understanding of how science and technology policy are determined in
a democratic society and the role of the individual in influencing policy.
In order to assess whether students have demonstrated these aspects, the assessment tasks have had to be flexible enough to accommodate a range of contexts, relatively open-ended enough to allow choice, knowledge and opinion to be expressed, but at the same time sufficiently prescriptive enough so that both students and teachers can grapple with what is expected. The following section describes how the New Zealand achievement standard has allowed both a degree of flexibility and yet indicates specific criteria for levels of achievement.
The New Zealand Achievement Standard System
In 1991, the New Zealand Qualification Authority developed a single
and was developed in response to the recognition that the previous norm-referenced based assessment system was not providing sufficient information about specific knowledge and skills that learners had obtained (Lennox, 1995; Strachan, 2001).
In this system, the qualifications cover a diverse range of ways or methods of assessing as well as examinations. Assessment against standards leads to the National Certificate in Educational Achievement and specific criteria detailed for each standard were seen to align assessment methods with intended learning. Approximately half of the available standards in any subject domain are assessed through external examinations. Other standards allow students to demonstrate evidence of meeting the criteria through completing learning activities during class time where samples of work could be collected for formal assessment. This type of assessment is considered to be more authentic and more closely aligns the desired learning outcomes to assessment tasks. The intention was that students could have multiple opportunities to demonstrate their competencies of the standards.
“apply” or “evaluate” at the excellence level. These differentiated levels are intended to give students, parents, tertiary institutions and employers a comprehensive account of students’ knowledge and skills (NZQA, 2001). Approximately half of the achievement standards are internally assessed by teachers. An example of the internally assessed achievement standard that targets bioethical issues in the final year of schooling, is given in Appendix 1. Although the National Qualifications Authority have developed a range of exemplar assessment tasks that schools can use for internal assessment, teachers are encouraged to design their own assessment tasks that allow students to
demonstrate the criteria of the standard. This means there is a lot of flexibility both in terms of choice of content that is assessed and the form (or mode) in which it is assessed (for example, through presentations in class, assignment work, essays, etc.).
Problems related to assessing social and ethical issues
Social and ethical issues are intrinsically laden with multiple perspectives, values beliefs and attitudes. This poses problems for teachers who have found it difficult to develop assessment tasks so that they allow students to demonstrate nuances, judgement, and weighing of alternatives rather than fixed answers. One of the problems is that the assessment techniques themselves depend on judgement and are open to alternative interpretations. Assessment task design therefore, needs to be open-ended enough to allow students opportunities to demonstrate analysis, synthesis evaluation and critical awareness of the ambiguous and contextual nature of the issues (Conner, 2003).
assessment?” This is even more crucial when the knowledge may be controversial, biased or contextual. In other words, what knowledge do we expect to be
demonstrated?
These questions become even more important given that Biggs and Moore (1993) indicate that students tend to orient their approaches to learning and what they focus on, according to what is assessed, and how it is assessed. Traditionally students have been accustomed to being assessed on content knowledge. The new forms of assessment though require students to demonstrate multiple points of view and the problematic nature of their topic. The relative weighting given to content versus the social and ethical issues components in assessment tasks is likely to influence students’ perceptions of what is important (Aikenhead, 2000) and may drive what is taught. For example if the scientific content is given a higher weighting, students and teachers will focus on this, rather than the social and ethical issues.
Other difficulties and dilemmas surrounding the teaching, learning and assessment in these contexts stem from a lack of clarity about what we expect students to demonstrate in terms of critical thinking or reasoned arguments. In the achievement standards system, criteria for different levels of achievement are determined by an achievement standard outline (Appendix 1). Both students and teachers can access examples of expected answers on the Ministry of Education’s web site (NZQA, 2006). This is especially important for giving teachers
guidelines about what is expected in terms of critical thinking and for their judgements for each level of achievement.
have met the criteria. There is no prescribed content that students must convey but rather they must demonstrate the skills of evaluation and discussion of multiple perspectives (Appendix 1). Evaluation requires the student to:
comment on sources and information, considering ideas such as validity (date, peer reviewed, scientific acceptance), bias (attitudes, values, beliefs), weighing up how science ideas are used by
different groups, own opinions, attitudes and beliefs
provide a justified position that supports or opposes aspects of the issue or an implication of the issue. Justified means to demonstrate,
with supporting evidence, why the position has been chosen.
Discussion requires the student to show understanding by linking biological
ideas. It may involve students in justifying, relating, evaluating, comparing and
contrasting, and analysing ideas.
evaluate student learning was that students often did not have sufficient writing skills or they found it difficult to clearly record and give thorough written accounts of their views. This suggests that differences between what students write and what they say or have discussed in class, may either be a result of their lack of ability to develop representations that allow them to recall important aspects or that their limitations in writing (composing) skills prevented them from writing about their thinking. Aikenhead (1988) cites a similar study by Yarroch in which students tended to understate, and sometimes not state, what they knew.
Teachers in New Zealand are now questioning how they can utilise productive pedagogies that incorporate on-going continual assessment and feedback so that students increase their understandings and abilities (Lingard & Mills, 2002), rather than surveys or tests to assess students thinking. This can be done in a multitude of ways, particularly through classroom activities that address issues clarification, issues analysis and/or inquiry (Conner, 2001). A range of activities for such purposes have been published by Jarvis, Hickford and Conner (1998) and Macer (2006). The following section describes a case study that illustrates how a range of activities were used to develop students’ critical thinking about bioethics and about their own learning and the associated assessment.
A case study of a biology class in New Zealand
p. 28). Assessment has therefore focused on whether students can demonstrate critical thinking and if they can demonstrate informed decision-making. This case study was conducted prior to the introduction of achievement standards. Students were required to write an essay of about 500 words to demonstrate their
knowledge and understanding of the issues, as well as give their opinions, as part of the three hour national University Bursaries examination. The section of the exam that focussed on the biological, social and ethical issues of a contemporary topic, was worth 20% of the overall examination. This was high stakes external assessment, yet attempted to assess this area using a complex task; writing an essay.
In previous years as a teacher of biology, I had been frustrated about the lack of students’ awareness of the issues and the seeming lack of ability of many students to purposefully research information, apply their understanding and use text organisation structures to write more effective essays. Therefore, together with a teacher from an inner city school, I designed an intervention to try to address these two issues.
A wide range of teaching activities were used to expose the ambiguous and uncertain nature of the bioethical issues associated with cancer. These drew on resources that have been developed for schools to support teaching and learning about social and ethical issues in various contexts (Lemin, Potts, & Welsford, 1994; Gordon & Nicholas, 1996; Jarvis, Hickford & Conner, 1998), as well as cotemporary research articles from the Cancer Society, Scientific American and New Scientist. Small group discussions, scenarios, case studies, and videos were
used as stimulus activities for getting students to clarify and analyse their values. Students were required to use inquiry to investigate the biological, social and ethical aspects of cancer using classroom activities and independent research. These included, detection methods; the choices of who to treat and how to treat cancer patients; the costs of prevention and treatments; advantages and
disadvantages of a range of treatments; genetic screening; euthanasia; and the personal, family and social implications of all of the above.
metacognition (Conner, 2003; Conner & Gunstone, 2004). These were assisted through prompting and questioning by the teacher, through self and peer assessment activities and various artefacts such as a journal bookmark and an essay checklist.
Self and peer assessment
Black and William (1998) have indicated that strong assessment practices include: positive feedback
helping students to develop short-term goals (or learning intentions) clarifying why aspects of learning are worthwhile
using questions that encourage inferential and deductive reasoning
using prompts to help students generate their own questions (about content and the processes of learning). (Italics are added)
During this study, several issues relating to self and peer assessment became apparent. These centred round the students’ knowledge of content and knowledge of processes for learning. Students needed to identify and question their own ideas and beliefs before they could make decisions about what should be included in their essays. That is, they needed to analyse (evaluate) their ideas in some way, based on comparisons with other ideas from the literature or from classroom activities. Some students were able to do this very well. Those students who actively used self-questioning produced higher quality essays (Conner&
Gunstone, 2004). The teacher often gave the class hints and modelled questioning protocols or aspects for them to consider. However deciding how much guidance to give to support students was a dilemma for this teacher. This was because he realised that too little guidance may have prevented some students from achieving well, whereas too much guidance may have perpetuated a reliance on the teacher to instigate learning processes. In this case the teacher wanted to students to develop self-regulating learning habits so that they might become more independent learners and thinkers (Conner, 2004).
the students. One student commented that he did not have sufficient knowledge about what could be included in the essays to be able to assess someone else’s essay and that “you would not want to be mean to your friends.”
The use of essay as an assessment task
At the time of this case study, students were assessed by an essay in a national examination. This meant that there were no immediate consequences for poor performance or non-completion of their draft essays that they wrote during class time. Now, this section of the curriculum is assessed by teachers, as an internally assessed achievement standard (Appendix 1) and therefore the work produced in class now has high stakes attached to it.
Many students only included a limited range of issues in their essays (Conner & Gunstone, 2004). This is disappointing considering the apparent wide exposure to the issues in classroom discussions and other activities. As Aikenhead (2000) has noted, students’ and teachers’ perceptions of the importance of the social and ethical aspects of issues are linked to the degree to which they are given real importance in the assessment. In the formative marking of the essay by students and teachers, a discussion of the issues was worth 10 marks out of a possible 40. More emphasis could have been placed on the importance of discussing a range of issues in the essays. Also, students could have been reminded to use the essay-marking schedule as a guide and for checking their essays more often to help them evaluate what was important and how their essay met the requirements.
Some students had difficulties in developing and evaluating their own and other students’ essays. These included:
Asking themselves questions that required little effort to answer, which down graded the effectiveness of self-questioning.
Asking questions related to personal interest, which was motivating and essential in their consideration of the bioethical issues, but these detracted from a focus on the scientific ideas or on the evaluative aspects of the issues that they needed to demonstrate. Finding relevant information or discriminating between relevant
and irrelevant information during the inquiry process.
Judging their understanding of the text as complete, consistent and compatible with their prior knowledge when in fact it was
Judging the writing as being adequate, even though it lacked sufficient content, was not substantiated with reason nor sufficient examples.
Misinterpreting what they had to demonstrate
Since this section of the curriculum is now internally assessed by teachers, schools can chose from a range of modes, rather than being restricted to an essay in an examination.
Implications for teaching
When evaluative processes need to be applied and demonstrated as part of
assessment, such as demonstrating an understanding of bioethical issues and being able to critically discuss them from multiple perspectives, teachers need to clarify with students quite precisely what is expected. Once teachers are clear about this, they then need to guide students through the appropriate learning processes. In particular, it seems important that teachers help students to develop skills in self-questioning (Bakaponos & White, 1990). If students lack knowledge of how to identify, analyse and critically discuss the ambiguous and contextual nature of the issues, they can hardly be expected to be reflective on utilising this knowledge to their own advantage by choosing or developing learning strategies to help them succeed (National Research Council, 1999). Similarly, if students are uncertain about the criteria on which their work is to be assessed, they are unlikely to align their learning practices with what needs to be demonstrated in the assessment (Lingard & Mills, 2003). Teachers need to model how to evaluate ideas, weigh up evidence, detect bias and they should give multiple examples of the sort of
year of high school. Teachers should not assume that students have developed discriminatory skills, but should explicitly check whether students use higher-order thinking about content and the processes of learning.
If assessment practices are to be used to inform learning, then it is important that students get appropriate feedback on their progress (Dixon & Williams, 2003). Students need to get feedback in order to monitor and plan future activities and they need assistance with developing schemas and extend these for later use in reasoning or justifying particular points of view (Black, 2003). This can be through peer assessment or the teacher. In this study students reported that to enable them to give effective feedback to each other, they needed to know what should be demonstrated in terms of the content and how to communicate the critical, contextual nature of the issues in more detail.
References
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Biblographic note
Dr Lindsey Conner is a Principal Lecturer at the Christchurch College of
Appendix 1
Achievement Standard
Subject Reference Biology 3.2
Research a contemporary biological issue
Level 3 Credits 3 Assessment Internal
Subfield Science
Domain Biology
Registration date 1 November 2005 Date version published 1 November 2005
This achievement standard involves researching a contemporary biological issue. Achievement Criteria
Achievement Achievement with Merit Achievement with Excellence
Research information to describe a contemporary
biological issue.
Integrate researched information to explain a contemporary biological issue.
Integrate and evaluate researched information
to discuss a contemporary biological issue.
Explanatory Notes
1 This achievement standard is derived from Biology in the New Zealand Curriculum, Learning Media, Ministry of Education, 1994, p. 28, achievement objective 8.3 (a).
2 In research, the student collects and interprets information from mainly secondary sources. Use of primary sources is acceptable. The research will be conducted with teacher guidance. This means the teacher is supporting the student throughout the research but the whole process will be student driven. The student is to select an issue, either from a list provided by the teacher or from the student’s own research. The teacher guidance gives general information in the form of broad questions, resource suggestions, or possible new directions.
3 An issue is one for which people hold different opinions or viewpoints. 4 For achievement, students are expected to describe:
biological concepts and processes relating to the issue
implications of the issue, which can be biological, social, ethical, economic or environmental
differing opinions or viewpoints.
5 Students are required to support their description, explanation or discussion with referenced information. This means that references to information sources are
included within the text of the report, with full details given in a reference list.
Describe requires the student to define, use annotated diagrams, give characteristics of, or an account of.
Integrate means to bring together and organise relevant information and opinions from a range of sources.
Explain requires the student to provide a reason as to how or why something occurs.
Evaluate requires the student to:
comment on sources and information, considering ideas such as validity (date, peer reviewed, scientific acceptance), bias (attitudes, values, beliefs), weighing up how science ideas are used by different groups, own opinions, attitudes and beliefs provide a justified position that supports or opposes aspects of the issue or an implication of the issue.
Justified means to demonstrate, with supporting evidence, why the position has been chosen.
Discuss requires the student to show understanding by linking biological ideas. It may involve students in justifying, relating, evaluating, comparing and
contrasting, and analysing.
Quality Assurance
1 Providers and Industry Training Organisations must be accredited by the Qualifications Authority before they can register credits from assessment against achievement standards.
2 Accredited providers and Industry Training Organisations assessing against achievement standards must engage with the moderation system that applies to those achievement standards.
Accreditation and Moderation Action Plan (AMAP) reference 0226 Achievement Standard
Subject Reference Biology 3.2
Title Research a contemporary biological issue
Level 3 Credits 3 Assessment Internal
Subfield Science
Domain Biology
Registration date 1 November 2005 Date version published 1 November 2005
This achievement standard involves researching a contemporary biological issue. Achievement Criteria
Achievement Achievement with Merit Achievement with Excellence
Research information to describe a contemporary biological issue.
Integrate researched information to explain a contemporary biological issue.
Explanatory Notes
7 This achievement standard is derived from Biology in the New Zealand Curriculum, Learning Media, Ministry of Education, 1994, p. 28, achievement objective 8.3 (a).
8 In research, the student collects and interprets information from mainly secondary sources. Use of primary sources is acceptable. The research will be conducted with teacher guidance. This means the teacher is supporting the student throughout the research but the whole process will be student driven. The student is to select an issue, either from a list provided by the teacher or from the student’s own research. The teacher guidance gives general information in the form of broad questions, resource suggestions, or possible new directions.
9 An issue is one for which people hold different opinions or viewpoints. 10 For achievement, students are expected to describe:
biological concepts and processes relating to the issue
implications of the issue, which can be biological, social, ethical, economic or environmental
differing opinions or viewpoints.
11 Students are required to support their description, explanation or discussion with referenced information. This means that references to information sources are
included within the text of the report, with full details given in a reference list. 12 Terms
Describe requires the student to define, use annotated diagrams, give characteristics of, or an account of.
Integrate means to bring together and organise relevant information and opinions from a range of sources.
Explain requires the student to provide a reason as to how or why something occurs.
Evaluate requires the student to:
comment on sources and information, considering ideas such as validity (date, peer reviewed, scientific acceptance), bias (attitudes, values, beliefs), weighing up how science ideas are used by different groups, own opinions, attitudes and beliefs
provide a justified position that supports or opposes aspects of the issue or an implication of the issue. Justified means to demonstrate, with supporting evidence, why the position has been chosen.
Quality Assurance
3 Providers and Industry Training Organisations must be accredited by the Qualifications Authority before they can register credits from assessment against achievement standards.
4 Accredited providers and Industry Training Organisations assessing against achievement standards must engage with the moderation system that applies to those achievement standards.
