Intuitions About Science, Technology, and Nature: A Fruitful Approach to Understand Judgments About Socio-Scientific Issues - Affective Dimensions in Chemistry Education - page 92

(Gebhard, 2007 ). In this respect, ethically relevant beliefs about science and
technology, which can be activated while engaging in scientific topics, are
addressed by the already mentioned “everyday myths.” Hence an essential intention
of the “everyday myths” approach is a sensitization to intuitive judgments of
students that are often disregarded in class due to their supposedly irrational or
rambling character.
According to the social-intuitionist model of moral judgment, these beliefs about
the world and idea of man influence ethical discussions and therefore moral
judgments and behavior. The rationality of scientific approaches toward the phe-
nomena of the world is often positively set apart from the ideas in everyday life,
which are perceived as naive, emotional, or even irrational. This juxtaposition bares
the risk of excluding these ideas from science classes. Important for the approach
“everyday myths,” however, is the basic assumption that both the scientific and the
everyday approach to reality are understood as complementary rationalities.
According to Boesch ( 1980 ), objectifying and subjectifying are bilingual
approaches to understand phenomena of the world.
In the works of the Hamburg research group and on the basis of group discus-
sions with students about genetic engineering, twelve ethical relevant beliefs
were reconstructed (Gebhard & Mielke, 2003 ). In order to examine students

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intuitive operating beliefs about genetic engineering, Gebhard and Mielke chose
the qualitative method of group discussions, which seizes suggestions from philos-
ophy for children (see Gebhard, Nevers, & Billmann-Mahecha, 2003 ; Nevers,
2009 ). The centerpiece of this method is to provoke a discussion between the
participants by reading an open-ended story. The story contains a controversial
conversation between two adolescents who represent divergent, justifiable posi-
tions. The story ends with a dilemma and the participants of the group discussion
are asked for their opinion.
The discussions are analyzed according to the grounded theory approach.
Typical “everyday myths” respectively intuitive beliefs about genetic engineering
are, for example:

•“Life is sacred” (life has a dignity of its own).
•“Nature is a meaningful idea” (nature gives us moral orientation and it

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forbidden to manipulate the natural order).
•“Ambivalence of discovery and knowledge” (knowledge and insight are Janus
faced: on the one hand, humankind can free itself; on the other hand, knowledge
is dangerous and unequal).
•“Death and immortality” (life-extending techniques are beneficial, and at the
same moment, immortality is eerily aspiration).
•“Health” (healthiness has a dignity of its own and legitimate risky

technologies).
•“Belonging versus exclusion” (if people are against new technologies, they can
be excluded from society).
•“Human as homo faber” (humans have the skills and the urge to engineering
and to forming the world).