Students' reasoning processes in making decisions about an authentic, local socio-scientific issue: bat conservation

Education for scientific literacy entails the development of scientific knowledge and the ability to apply this knowledge and value judgments to decisions about real-life issues. This paper reports an attempt to involve secondary level biology students in making decisions about an authentic socio-scientific issue—that of bat conversation—through a classroom activity. A decision making framework adapted from the literature was designed to help students tackle the issue from multiple perspectives with due consideration given to relevant scientific knowledge, rational argumentation, and the values underlying the possible options. An evaluation of the results showed that there were considerable changes in the students’ decisions before and after the activity, thus reflecting a change in values from an anthropocentric viewpoint to an eclectic perspective that emphasizes both utilitarian and biocentric values. Copyright © 2010 Routledge.