Abstract
The conflicts between nature and nurture are brought to the fore and challenges socio-scientific decision-making in science education. The multitude of meanings of these concepts and their roles in societal discourses can impede students’ development of understanding for different perspectives, e.g. on gene technology. This study problematizes students’ use of “nature” and “naturalness” to further the development of the experience of science education in relation to the nature-nurture debate. We build on the social constructivism view that present conceptions of nature and naturalness emanate from historical and modern social constructions of nature. Claims presented by upper secondary school students in interviews actualizing the control of human actions pertaining to treatments for hereditary diseases by making use of concepts of “nature” and “naturalness were analysed. The students suggested control of human activity on different levels of biological organisation, either from within the Romantic view or the Enlightenment view on nature. The Romantic view provided students with moral grounds for consistently preserve what is considered as nature and means to bolster their reasoning by referring to the balance in nature, the purity of nature, and the laws of nature. The Enlightenment view provided students with means to support gene technology by embedding “nurture” into the concept “nature” by using knowledge while implying that nurture is a natural way to overcome such imperfections of nature. We propose that these conflicting views should be addressed in biological education to promote students’ understanding of contemporary discourses dependent on the different concepts of nature and nurture.
Highlights
As a part of the Swedish high-school biology curriculum students are expected to utilise their newly acquired biological knowledge to make informed decisions concerning socio-scientific issues
All students had participated in a five-week block of a science education course that dealt with the topics of genetics and gene technology
The students employed the concepts of nature and naturalness as well as the implied relationship between nature and nurture at a number of different biological organization levels
Summary
As a part of the Swedish high-school biology curriculum students are expected to utilise their newly acquired biological knowledge to make informed decisions concerning socio-scientific issues. By following the course of construction of the concept of nature over time, a long-standing conflict between nature and nurture (human culture shaping nature) emerges This conflict is apparent in present debates on, for example, conservation biology and modern medical treatment. She claims that by making choices regarding which children should be born, based on medical knowledge, the social construction of the human body results in a genetic moral order in which there are good and bad human bodies From her perspective, nature should be regarded as providing the guiding rule to society and societal discourse and gene technology in medicine is viewed as an unwanted form of nurture and the cause of an unwanted societal discourse regarding human value. In the students’ discussions the meaning of nature shifted, exemplifying the multitude of meanings that can be ascribed to the concept
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