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Establishing Linkages with Humanistic and Liberal Goals of Science—Case Narrative of a High School Teacher

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Abstract

The present chapter portrays a case study of a High School Biology teacher named ‘Arunima’ in order to understand the different facets of her knowledge in the area of ‘Ethical Issues in Biological Sciences’. The different knowledge domains that could be studied here include her knowledge about teaching, learning, pedagogy, curriculum, students’ misconceptions, assessment, views on Nature of Science (NOS), etc., in the context of ethical issues in Biological Sciences. Teaching and learning about ethical issues in Biological Sciences includes many areas and topics where a need is felt to think beyond the positivist view of Science and incorporate humanistic and liberal ideals for taking the ‘right’ decisions. It can be clearly seen here that science teaching can no more be an objective affair rather includes many areas where one’s own subjectivity and reasoning is reckoned and gets projected. The present case study will provide an insight into the categories of teachers’ knowledge that are needed for addressing the ethical issues in a more humanistic way in the Science classroom.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The present chapter involves the use of certain codes, e.g. KTS, OST, KNOS that refer to teacher’s knowledge domains (for detailed reference, see Appendix F).

  2. 2.

    Source: Survey Proforma (Appendix C).

  3. 3.

    Source: Questionnaire.

  4. 4.

    Emotional Metaphors indicate how someone feels about events, objects or people in his/her life. Researches have also shown that how one’s professional knowledge in teaching may be identified and analyzed through the use of one’s metaphorical language. Metaphorical language is said to be an extraordinarily powerful tool through which teachers express the meaning of their experiences in teaching and much of their pedagogical knowledge which teachers hold (e.g., see Briscoe, 1991; Clandinin, 1986).

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Correspondence to Astha Saxena .

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Saxena, A. (2019). Establishing Linkages with Humanistic and Liberal Goals of Science—Case Narrative of a High School Teacher. In: Ethics in Science. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9009-9_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9009-9_5

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