Students like learning about controversies, but there are some traps.

Decades ago, in my first year of full-time university teaching, I taught “The environmental context,” which was about the social aspects of environmental issues. Some students in the class were doing an environmental science degree; others were doing an arts degree. To appeal to both sorts of students, I built the class around several controversial topics with both scientific and social dimensions.

            One of them was nuclear power. I was an opponent, and so were nearly all the students. To challenge them, one week I invited an experienced figure from the Australian Atomic Energy Commission to give a pro-nuclear guest presentation. Several of the students tried to challenge him, but they could hardly dent his arguments.

            From this experience, I learned several things. One was that controversial topics gain students’ interest. Conflict is well known to stimulate interest. Because conflict attracts audiences, it is one of the “news values” journalists and editors use to decide what is newsworthy. In this respect, students are just another sort of audience.

            But there was a problem with nuclear power as a topic. Most of the students already knew they were opposed to it. The trouble was they felt they didn’t need to do anything further once they knew which side of the controversy they supported. They hadn’t studied pro-nuclear arguments, so the pro-nuclear speaker out-argued them.

            I watched this with some amusement. To develop rebuttals to pro-nuclear arguments, I had studied them in depth. I could readily see possible challenges to our visiting speaker, but kept quiet, which worked out well. The students learned a lesson.

            There was another problem. Many students try to figure out their teacher’s viewpoint. When doing assignments, they say what they think their teacher wants to hear. This is instrumental behaviour to get better grades. The trouble was that they knew I was anti-nuclear, so that’s the perspective most of them took in their assignments.

            I told them that if they wanted to support their views effectively, they needed to study the views of opponents. But few took this to heart. It’s pretty hard to spend hours poring over views you disagree with. It’s well documented that most people prefer to read about views that reinforce their own.

            To counter this, in a later year I introduced a different sort of controversial issue: fluoridation, the process of adding the element fluoride to public water supplies to reduce tooth decay in children. At the time, Australia was highly fluoridated but there was little attention to the issue. The students were in a quandary. They knew the official line: fluoridation was good. But they weren’t sure what an environmental perspective might be.

            Several of them tried to figure out my view, namely whether I was pro or antifluoride. I told them I didn’t have a strong view — I was just studying the debate. That was true, and conveniently it meant students couldn’t decide how to please me, their teacher, by adopting my view. Because the students didn’t all agree with each other, we had some stimulating discussions in class.

            Years later, I taught a class titled “Scientific and technological controversy.” I found a good way to stimulate student interest. They worked in groups to investigate controversies. They could choose who to work with, and each group chose what controversy to study. This general approach worked well in other classes, including ones where disagreements were not so salient.

Marking

I’ve always wanted to treat students fairly, but it’s not easy to avoid bias. When marking assignments, my judgement could be unconsciously influenced when I knew whose essay I was marking. I found a good way to counter this. I asked the students to put their student numbers on their essays but not their names. After marking all the essays, I could match each one to the student’s name.

            There remained a different problem. If students thought they knew what I wanted to hear — for example, being anti-nuclear — they might adapt their assignments accordingly. Some of them told me they did this in other classes. The solution was to get someone else to mark their assignments, such as a different tutor in the same class.

            One problem remained for which there was no obvious solution. On many controversial topics, there is a dominant perspective and a dissident perspective. Examples include fluoridation and vaccination. Few students will take the risk of supporting the dissident perspective unless they know whoever marks their assignments will be sympathetic to it.

Goals

Thinking about what students should learn about controversies raises a more general issue: what should anyone know about controversies? Time is limited, and it’s impossible to study lots of controversies in depth. Even to get to the bottom of a single one requires a major effort. What can be done?

            Some people take a shortcut. They adopt the position of authorities or the groups with the most power and influence. This makes sense in many cases. For example, is the universe expanding? Nearly all cosmologists say so, so why not believe them? But it can be useful to know that there are a few dissidents, ones with credentials and publications and university positions. One option is to accept the standard position but be open to being wrong.

            Whether the universe is expanding is contested mainly within scientific circles, and has little relevance to everyday life. It’s different with issues like climate change, abortion, nuclear power, euthanasia, GMOs and vaccination. These have obvious social, political and health implications. They raise ethical concerns.

            In each of such issues, there is evidence on each side, and sometimes there are multiple “sides.” But there is something extra. Many of those involved have a stake in the outcome. Sometimes it’s jobs and funding. Almost always, it involves status. And it involves psychological commitment. If you’ve been campaigning for or against fluoridation for years, it’s hard to admit you’ve been wrong.

            There’s so much to learn about controversies. Studying them is one way to do it. Another is to get involved, taking a side and trying to engage with those on the other side. If students ever do this, they’ll learn far more than from any class.

Brian Martin
bmartin@uow.edu.au
Publications on scientific and technological controversies

Thanks to Olga Kuchinskaya, Julia LeMonde, Alison Moore and Erin Twyford for useful comments.