Abstract
The present study examined the outcomes of a newly designed four-lesson science module on
opinion-forming in the context of genomics in upper secondary education. The lesson plan aims to
foster 16-year-old students’ opinion-forming skills in the context of genomics and to test the effect
of the use of fiction in the module. The basic hypothesis tested in this study is whether fiction
stimulates students to develop opinions with regard to socio-scientific issues. A quasi-experimental
pre-test and post-test design was used, involving two treatment groups and one control group. One
of the experimental groups received a science module incorporating movie clips (i.e., the movie
group). The other experimental group received the same science module, but only news report
clips were used (i.e., the news report group). Prior to and after the module, 266 secondary school
students completed a questionnaire to test their opinion-forming skills. The results demonstrate
that the science module had a significant positive effect on students’ opinion-forming skills and
that the movie group improved their skills more compared with the news report group. It may be
concluded that the use of fiction—to be more specific, movie clips about genomics extracted from
feature films—to introduce a socio-scientific issue in the classroom stimulates students to develop
their opinion-forming skills.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 2057-2083 |
| Number of pages | 27 |
| Journal | International Journal of Science Education |
| Volume | 31 |
| Issue number | 15 |
| Publication status | Published - 2009 |