Speaker: Mats Lindahl, Professor in science education, FHL
Students encounter information about scientific phenomena in everyday conversations, in media as well as in science education. The manner by which such information is given affects how for example biological processes are understood and valued. Especially in everyday conversations and in media, nature and what is natural are presented as good in a normative way. While media deals with the use of scientific knowledge, biology education deals with both knowledge of biological processes and with human use of knowledge, for example in medicine and biotechnology. Such use of scientific knowledge could be considered as “nurture”. While nurture is considered mainly as a problem among laymen, nature is not.
The relationship between nature and nurture is usually, although implicitly, displayed as dichotomous. Such superficial understanding of what nature and nurture, and their relationship, can mean creates a problem since understanding of biological phenomena and processes, as well as prudent decisions related to medicine and biotechnology are jeopardized. 2017-03-24
