Ética animal e fisiologia da dor: uma questão sociocientífica para o ensino de biologia

Abstract

The way humans relate to nature, hegemonically, implies in animal exploitation practices, based on the controversial understanding that non-human animals should ensure welfare and provide entertainment to humans. Bringing this debate into the classroom enhances the awareness of those who are part of the class about animal rights and can encourage students to make decisions under a critical perspective. For Peter Singer, the moral consideration criterion for non-human animals lies in the ethics of sentience. Sentient beings have an interest in remaining alive and in optimal living conditions, that is, they want or desire to remain alive without pain and suffering. Based on this premise, the present work aimed to develop a Social Science Question (SSQ) to foster a critical debate about animal ethics and pain physiology in the context of Biology Teaching. Specifically we aimed to: 1) analyze approaches to animal ethics in biology teaching through a narrative literature review, and 2) develop a SSC on animal ethics and pain physiology potential for critical debate in the biology context; 3) design a tool for peer validation of the proposed SSQ-based teaching intervention. For the elaboration of the SSQ, we followed three elements, the first being the creation of a case containing dialogues and characters approaching students' sociocultural contexts, followed by the creation of guiding questions capable of mobilizing aspects of socioscientific problems and, finally, learning objectives defined from conceptual, procedural and attitudinal contents. To this end, we used the methodological approach aligned with Educational Design Research, which encompasses the systematic study of designing, developing, and analyzing innovative educational interventions, and so, in the first phase we conducted a narrativetype review to develop the teaching proposal and proceed with peer validation in the second phase. Our results indicate a scarce approach to the subject of animal ethics in biology education and a lack of depth in the discussions. Based on this, we developed a potential SSQ to foster the debate about animal ethics and pain physiology in the context of Biology Teaching, using a case containing questions about teaching the nervous system and the mechanisms by which animals (human and non-human) can feel pain. In addition, we developed a tool for validation of the proposed SSQ, which we will do in further studies.