Lesson 2, Student and Teacher Behaviors in Science
Author(s):
Kenneth Abbott, and William Leacock
Overview of
Lesson
- Courses for Which the Lesson is
Intended
- Intended for use at the beginning of the year in
any science classroom.The teachers who developed this
lesson teach physics and earth science and have described
incidents that have occurred in their courses. Teachers of
other disciplines can easily modify the cases so that they
will be more familiar to their own students.
- Types of Teaching/Learning Activities Employed in
this Lesson
- Students working in cooperative learning groups
respond to cases involving ethical choices by students and
teachers in science classrooms. The teacher directs a
classroom discussion of the conclusions reached by the
groups. Students create and submit additional cases and
questions for use throughout the school year.
- Categories that Best Describe this
Lesson
- Behavior of students and honesty
- Ethics/Values Issues Raised by this
Lesson
- The cases presented raise questions about the
ethics of sharing test and laboratory results, of
manipulating data, of receiving credit for work done by
others, of a teacher adjusting a student's grade and of a
student taking action to prevent another student from
cheating. The same format can be used to raise questions
about other real life ethical issues encountered by science
students and teachers.
Lesson
Plan
The social and academic pressures experienced by
science students and teachers can sometimes induce them to
engage in questionable behavior. Such pressures are
frequently the result of conflicts between the performance
expectations and the ethical expectations placed on the
individuals by the school, the community and society. The
activities in this lesson provide an opportunity to examine
and discuss these types of conflicts. The students will
benefit from being given the chance to consider their own
actions prior to being confronted with similar ethical
choices. Students will be asked to consider nine case studies
based on actual situations that have occurred in a science
class setting. Questions are provided with each scenario to
stimulate and initiate discussion. The lesson requires two
normal length class periods.
Divide the class into six groups of 3-5 students.
Assign one member in each group to each of the following
roles:
- Leader/Taskmaster - responsible for keeping the
group on task. Obtains the material for the group and
moderates discussions.
- Reader - reads the case to the group and responds
to factual questions about them.
- Scribe - records the groups responses during the
discussions of each case.
- Presenter - describes and explains the groups
conclusions to the other groups and to the
class.
Group the case studies into three sets of three and
assign each set to two of the groups. Allow twenty-five
minutes for the groups to read, discuss and record their
responses to their three assigned case studies. During the
remainder of the first class period the two groups that have
been assigned the same set of case studies get together to
exchange views and begin preparing a presentation for the
class. At the beginning of the second period the pairs of
groups continue their preparation for the class presentation.
The two presenters from the original groups agree on how they
will divide the presentation. The presenters describe and
explain the points of agreement and any conflicting points of
view that have emerged from the discussions. These
conclusions are then discussed by the class. The teacher
should intervene only to raise ethical choices or issues not
considered in the presentations or discussion. The students
are given a homework assignment requiring each of them to
create and submit an ethical case study - either imagined or
based on experience - along with discussion questions. After
reviewing and giving the student authors a chance to improve
their creations, the teacher should select the best of the
student cases for brief discussions at the beginning of class
periods during the school year.
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Case # 1
Rachel has a crush on Don, who is a popular student
and star of the school basketball team. Both Rachel and Don
have the same physics teacher. Rachel is in Mr. Link's third
period class and Don is in his sixth period class. Rachel
works hard and is doing very well in physics. Don is not very
interested in science, does little work, and is barely
passing. Rachel and Don meet each other in the hall every day
between fourth and fifth periods. Today there is a test in
Mr. Link's class and Don did not study because he was very
tired after basketball practice yesterday. Don asks Rachel to
give him the test answers. She knows that if he doesn't pass
the test he may fail the course.
- What are Rachel's and Don's options?
- If you were Rachel, what would you do?
Why?
- If you were Rachel's friend, would you recommend
that she should do what you would do?
Case # 2
John is doing a research study for his earth science
class. The object is to measure and make a plot of the
altitude of the sun at noon over a four-month period. He
collects data every third day. At the end of the four months
John has six missing data points because cloudy weather on
those days prevented him from making the necessary
measurements. He decides to estimate the correct data points
for the missing days and simply include them in both his
table of data and his graph.
- Did John's action violate any principle of
scientific ethics?
- What other options did John have?
- If you were John, what would you have
done?
Case # 3
Pete, Brooke and Lisa are laboratory partners in
their chemistry class. Yesterday Lisa was absent. This
required Pete and Brooke to work very diligently to complete
the experiment during the lab period so they could hand in
the report in class today. Today Lisa has returned to school
after being ill. She meets her lab partners on the way into
school in the morning and asks them for the data from
yesterday's experiment so she can write it up during study
period and hand it in. Pete is willing to give Lisa the data,
but Brooke objects.
- Was it right for Lisa to ask for the
data?
- What other options does Lisa have.
- What should Brooke do if Pete gives Lisa the
data, despite her objection?
- What would you do if you were Pete or Brooke? If
you were Lisa?
Case # 4
Joe is making electrical measurements in a physics
laboratory. Joe is a good student and is confident that he
has set up the circuit properly. When Joe tries to do the
required calculations to verify the formulas in his physics
book he finds that the data he took appears to be incorrect.
He suspects that one of the electrical components he was
given is not working properly. His teacher, Mr. Grim, is busy
helping some of the weaker students so Joe decides not to
report his problem. Instead he does the mathematical
calculations to determine what a correct set of data would be
and simply changes his own data to match what he has
calculated.
- Since Joe is bright enough to figure out the
correct data is there anything wrong with what he
did?
- What other options were there for
Joe.
- If you were Joe, what would you have
done?
Case # 5
Janet is putting a lot of effort into her final
earth science report. She has neglected the course earlier in
the year and has chosen a difficult topic to impress her
teacher and get a good grade. Her friend Sarah, who is a very
good student is working on the same topic. Janet asks whether
she can work cooperatively with Sarah, as permitted by her
teacher. Janet then puts in little further effort, knowing
she can rely on Sarah to do a good job. Since she is Janet's
friend, Sarah raises no objections to having Sarah simply put
her name on the report and share the grade.
- Since Sarah does not object, is there anything
improper about Janet's action?
- What other options are open to Sarah?
- If you were Sarah, what would you have
done?
- How could the teacher change the assignment,
without discouraging student cooperation, while preventing
students from simply taking credit for work done by
others?
Case # 6
Two years ago Central high hired new chemistry
teachers, Mr. Young and Mr. Keen. Last year Mr. Young's
students did not do as well on the statewide final exam as
Mr. Keen's chemistry students. The number of chemistry
students has been decreasing and the school is under pressure
to reduce expenses. It is therefore very likely that the
school administration will decide that only one chemistry
teacher is needed. To improve his chances of being retained,
it is important for Mr. Young's students to do well this
year. He has just received a copy of this year's statewide
exam. Mr. Young decides that during the last two weeks of
class he will only review the particular material that is
covered by questions on the exam and include many examples of
problems that are almost identical to the exam
questions.
- 1. Since he hasn't actually given his students
the answers to the exam questions, is there anything wrong
or unethical about Mr. Young's actions?
- Can you think of any negative consequences of Mr.
Young's strategy?
- Is it a good idea for the state to give the
teachers advance copies of the exam?
Case # 7
Andy is doing a physics lab in which he attaches
different masses to the end of a spring and measures the
increase in the length of the spring. The instructions are to
express the results in the form of a simple graphical plot of
the data. He quickly discovers that if he plots the mass
versus the increase in the spring's length most of the points
fall on a straight line. Two of the points are clearly off
the line. Assuming that he must have made an error in
measuring the spring's length in the case of these two
points, Andy decides to erase them from his graph and data
table when he hands in his lab report.
- Was Andy justified in omitting the points that
didn't fall on the line?
- Is it ever permissible to ignore part of the data
taken during an experiment? If so, under what
circumstances.
- If you were Andy, what would you have
done?
Case # 8
Mr. King teaches earth science at Central High.
Larry, one of his students, is learning disabled and has
difficulty reading. Larry works hard and Mr. King likes him.
Twice during the year Larry has become discouraged and talked
to Mr. King about dropping the course. Both times Mr. King
persuaded him to stick with it. The final exam has several
problems based on reading a preceding detailed description of
an experiment. Larry finds this kind of problem particularly
difficult and fails the exam with a score of 52. He needed a
score of 72 to pass the course. Mr. King feels guilty about
having encouraged Larry and he simply changes his grade in
his record book to a 72. He justifies this to himself on the
basis of his speculation that Larry would have done much
better if he wasn't learning disabled.
- Is Mr. King's action justified?
- Can you think of any negative consequences of
this action?
- What other options were available to Mr.
King?
Case # 9
Steven has studied many hours for the chemistry
midterm exam. He is confident that he will do well. He has
lunch period just before the exam. He finishes quickly and
gets to the chemistry classroom several minutes before the
other students or the teacher. On his way to his desk he
notices that his classmate George's desk has extensive notes
related to the exam written on it. Since the desks are
moveable he replaces the desk with the writing with one from
the classroom next door. Steven is amused by the bewildered
expression on George's face when he sits down and recognizes
that his desk has been switched.
- Was George justified in switching the desk?
Why?
- What other options were open to
George?
- If you were George, what would you have
done?
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Discussion
The format of this lesson provides the science
teacher with the opportunity to have the students consider a
variety of classroom ethics issues that are based on his or
her past teaching experience. The value of including cases
that involve dubious behavior by teachers is that it
reassures students that the teacher recognizes that all human
beings, not only students, occasionally engage in
questionable ethical behavior. As specified in the lesson,
the role of the teacher during the discussion should be to
encourage the students to explore the various ethical choices
related to each of the cases. In general teachers should
refrain from presenting their own views about the ethical
issues raised by the cases so as not to discourage students
from making their own decisions. The authority associated
with the position of teacher can undermine the intent to
encourage students to examine all of the behavioral options
and reach their own personal decisions on the issues.
However, if a teacher has included a particular case because
it illustrates an ethical choice by students that he or she
considers unacceptable, then the teacher may wish to make
this clear, if the student discussion of the issue reveals
some ambiguity.
Kenneth Abbott, and William
Leacock, W.C. Mepham High School, Bellmore
Heidi Gross, Oyster Bay High School,
Oyster Bay.