Reiss MJ. A Framework Within Which to Determine How We Should Use Animals in Science Education. Environmental Discourses in Science Education. 2017;2:243-259. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-56375-6_17


Abstract

The scope of science is fundamentally to understand the natural (i.e., material, as opposed to aesthetic, moral, imaginary or other) domain. Since one of the more remarkable features of the Earth is the presence of millions of species of organisms, nearly 90 percent of them animals, one might imagine that animals would play a central role in school science education. But this is not the case. Biology curricula are heavily weighted towards humans, and inside and outside of school many students are now exposed to only a few non-human animal species. Here, I seek to provide a coherent framework within which we can consider how animals should be used in science education. To do this, I examine two main issues: (i) the purposes of science education, and (ii) an ethical analysis of how humans should use animals.