Abstract
In a preliminary empirical study of social-science and humanities students enrolled in teacher-training programs at two German universities, the authors have found a disparaging view of technology and science among said students. Their material knowledge of technology and science is the result of content they learned in high-school themselves. After having graduated, they chose social-sciences or humanities as their subjects. There is little or no overlap between science and engineering subjects and social-science and humanities subjects in teacher training programs. Apart from the students choices, this is also the consequence of an institutionally established and strict segregation of the academic fields that does not, unlike in other university systems, require the students to enroll in at least basic interdisciplinary courses. The result for science and technology awareness among the students is problematic, to say the least. While their knowledge of science and technology -being the product of high-school education - is often not up to date and also lacking in current developments, their moral and ethical judgement about the implications of scientific research and use of technology is strong. The preliminary study also showed that the students are interested in new technological and scientific developments, they just lack the ability to include this into their worldview, which is very strongly influenced by their choice of subjects in the humanities and social-sciences. Teaching these students has convinced the authors that their lack of technology and science knowledge combined with their inherent tendency to judge science and technology from the point of view of their respective field, impairs their ability to take an adequate part in science and technology discourse. Their awareness, and thus, their competence to rationally engage with science and technology is lacking. That is in part due to the depiction of science and technology in humanities and social-science courses, and on the other hand due to a lack of current science and technology education as part of a humanities and social-sciences program. The result becomes even more alarming if we assume that the future teachers will continue to relay their heavily biased opinions on science and technology in general, as well as their deficient knowledge of specific technologies to their future students, thus generating a vicious cycle of inadequate technology and science awareness. As the authors’ study has shown, these students are really interested in science and technology, they just lack key competencies to make an analytical connec- tion between their field of choice (humanities and social sciences) and technology and science, without resorting to moral and ethical judgement.
Highlights
Changing our research focus to a biology that we basically can only speculate about, that we only know about by extrapolating from what we know about our own biology, is a fundamental shift in our research epistemology
As astrobiology furthers our understanding of life on Earth as well as life in the universe, the discussion turns from being about purely speculative scenarios into a very immediate possibility, academics from various disciplines are challenged to pave the way for societal discourse by embracing the issues and providing, if not necessarily answers, at least the most urgent questions that should be faced
The paper will introduce a possible tool that might help to bridge that gap in university teaching, using the example of astrobiology
Summary
Changing our research focus to a biology that we basically can only speculate about, that we only know about by extrapolating from what we know about our own biology, is a fundamental shift in our research epistemology. If we interpret this as resentment or even fear of innovative technology in general and consider the fact that the surveyed students are going to be future teachers and will influence a whole generation of students on their opinion on technological and scientific innovations, the need for interdisciplinary university courses and societally relevant research across the boundaries of academic domains becomes rather essential This assumption is supported by another finding of the survey that was unexpected: even though both concepts had appeared in the news previous to the study, more than 45% of the surveyed students thought of asteroid mining as a science fiction topic; for the concept of Mars colonization the number was even higher with more than 60% of the students putting it down as a science fiction concept. The paper will introduce a possible tool that might help to bridge that gap in university teaching, using the example of astrobiology
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