Abstract
AbstractA survey has been carried out to investigate the provision of ethics teaching to students following Bioscience programmes at UK Universities. We report that 69% of undergraduate programmes described by respondents included an ethical component, although it may not be appropriate to extrapolate this value nationally. When ethics is taught, it is a little more likely to appear in the second year of a degree than in the third year, but with only limited use being made of the first year. In the vast majority of cases this teaching is carried out by bioscience staff from within the institution, but with the frequent involvement of staff from other Departments (e.g. Philosophy) and/or invited experts from outside the University. The majority of bioscience respondents were aware of the requirements for ethics in subject benchmark statements. A certain level of apprehension about teaching ethics was noted. Requests were made for additional teaching resources, including case studies, audio-visual material ...
Highlights
In March 2002, the UK Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) introduced undergraduate Benchmarking Subject Standards for Bioscience, as part of their broader programme of benchmarking academic standards (QAAa, 2002)
It was declared in the rubric that the survey form was designed for completion with reference to an individual undergraduate programme, as ethics provision may differ within a department/school depending on the programme followed
These were from 56 individuals working at 47 separate institutions, of which 25 were pre-1992, 15 were post-1992 and 7 were anonymous. This survey response represents a significant proportion (45%) of the 104 UK Higher Education Institutions known by the Learning and Teaching Support Network (LTSN) Bioscience to be delivering bioscience degree programmes
Summary
In March 2002, the UK Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) introduced undergraduate Benchmarking Subject Standards for Bioscience, as part of their broader programme of benchmarking academic standards (QAAa, 2002). The QAA’s basic threshold standards in bioscience include having ‘some understanding of ethical issues and the impact on society of advances in the biosciences’; whereas a good student should ‘be able to construct reasoned arguments to support their position on the ethical and social impact of advances in the biosciences’ (Section 5.3). Similar sentiments to these are found in the QAA’s subject benchmark statement for Agriculture, Forestry, Agricultural Sciences, Food Sciences and Consumer Sciences (QAAb, 2002); all of which fall within the remit of the Learning and Teaching Support Network (LTSN) Subject Centre for Bioscience
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