Outreach Rationale
In Critical Thinking and Cognitive Development, Rapaport claims that the process of cognitive development undergoes explicit stages noted for levels of uncertainty. Initial learners are suggested to approach problems dually. Explicitly, one decides that all problems are innately solvable thus the process of learning is to uncover the correct solutions to solvable problems. The role of the Teacher is to present interpretations of the Great Truth. It may be the case that interpretations are incorrect but the bona fide Great Truth is always there.
As students undergo further development, one might begin to utilise a pluralist theory of knowledge in which conflicting answers may indicate there exist problems to which no current solutions exist. In this case, it is unclear how to distinguish opinion from knowledge thus it no longer matters which solution one chooses. This is equivalent to shifting from an external authoritative mode of learning to an internal and subjective one. This process of re-evaluation and shifting degrees of uncertainty indeed continues to become more sophisticated. The consensus in literature however is that even high school juniors and seniors rarely move past pluralism –thus it is appropriately advanced for us to target year 7s and 8s.
Yet the scheme by which students shift their focus from external authorities onto the self is unclear. Rapaport speculates that learners metamorphose into pluralism upon developing internal intuitions about objects without developing accompanying justified beliefs –or indeed, justified true beliefs. Since we are not concerned with developing a theory of knowledge, we need not be concerned with Gettier cases.
For the purposes of this year’s bioethics program, we will attempt to use a cognitive theory of learning with thinking processes to directly shift students’ theory of knowledge on bioethics from dualism into pluralism.
Session 1 is intended to build background knowledge of students and give them sufficient information to arrive at a dual interpretation of gene ethics.
Session 2 motivates students to destabilise their certainty on ethical issues by presenting with specific counter-examples and scenarios. Thus, by the end of the program, students would have developed a pluralist view of gene ethics.
