SCIENCE THEATER—AN INNOVATIVE INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH TO TEACHING SCIENCE AND PERFORMING ARTS

Presented pedagogy utilizes a contemporary case on gene therapy with the purpose of making science relevant to the daily lives of our students. It is designed to humanize science and illustrate the scientific methodology and values. This pedagogy aims to develop students’ skills in group learning, speaking, and critical thinking while examining bioethical concerns surrounding the technology.

During the course students are expected to adopt the belief systems of multi-dimensional characters, real as well as fictional, and argue various sides of the scientific discussion in a public forum. In brief, they must become the characters whose ideas they have adopted for the purpose of the public presentation. This level of engagement with the material requires students to deeply interact with the topic in order to make biological and ethical applications to daily life and also to make decisions that will affect the lives of others. Students are therefore obliged to do much more than simply regurgitate lectures. In order to assume this level of involvement, students establish substantial engagement with the literature from a combination of primary and secondary sources. This enables them to familiarize themselves with the various positions on these issues. Being involved in an argument at this level forces students not only to become familiar with scholarly debate in a given area but also to begin to enter that debate on both a personal and professional level. This course offers a unique and creative way to evaluate science by opening debates to the public and forcing students to respond directly to unscripted questions. We utilized case studies involving gene therapy and declining bioversity but the model could ultimately be applied to any provocative subject throughout the sciences and humanities. It can be adapted to fit any number of scientific arguments and opens up creative discourse among what has traditionally been regarded as a rather static forum for the discussion of ideas. Further, this pedagogy brings a new understanding of the varying perspectives to the forefront of the students’ field of vision.