No discussion of science education can be complete without concerns for responsibility and
outcomes. Chapter 6 of Looking to the Future, “Strategies, Responsibilities and Outcomes”
discusses several approaches to teaching science, identifies several resources to enhance scientific
knowledge and understanding, and focuses cheeringly on the roles of multimedia and Internetbased
activities in developing a curriculum to focus on SSI. Three important strategies in science
education to which Hodson devotes much attention in the chapter are discussion, debate, and
group work. In presenting these three important strategies, Hodson alludes to types of student talk
in the science classroom or science education (p. 168): exploratory and presentational talk (Barnes,
1988), and disputational, cumulative, and exploratory talks (Mercer, 1995, 2000). Hodson
revisits the affective and social environments of learning, presents several research findings
related to evidence that “SSI-oriented teaching promotes conceptual understanding” (p. 176),
explores multiple perspectives on these issues and examines the concepts of trust, values, ethics,
emotions, and intuition as they affect responsibility and outcomes in science education. Finally,
Chapter 6 examines the problems, difficulties and anxieties that teachers face in planning science
curriculum and education.
Albert Einstein once remarked, “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is
blind” during the 1941 Symposium on Science, Philosophy and Religion. Well, in the same light,
science without ethics is unbalanced and dangerous. Hodson, as a superior educator of science
educators understands this, and thus Chapter 7 of Looking to the Future is titled “Teaching
Ethics”. In this chapter, Hodson discusses several problems and issues of science relative to
ideas of right and what we ought to do as embodied in differing ethical perspectives. Human
health issues and rights emerge as prominent in Hodson’s discussion, from ADHD, DNAgenetics
and stem cell issues and definition of what constitutes human life, to ethics in science
regarding non-human subjects. Several ethical theories with implications for scientific modeling,
guided practice, and application are presented: social construct (contract) theory,
consequentialists-utilitarian theory, deontological ethics, virtue ethics, and the meaning of right
and unacceptable as used in science research and education. Hodson discusses the rationale for
teaching ethics and closes the chapter by exploring the use of case studies in science education.