The Values of Biological Education from the Point of View of 2020 Events

(or Biotechnological Human Improvement through the Eyes of Students)

Elena V. Komarova

1 a

and Arnold E. Kiv

2 b

Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, 14 Aleksandra Nevskogo Str., Kaliningrad, 236041, Russia

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, P.O.B. 653, Beer Sheva, 8410501, Israel

Keywords:

Terminal Values, Instrumental Values, Biological Education, Human Enhancement, Bioethics, Future

Teachers of Biology.

Abstract:

The main idea of the research is that the value potential of academic disciplines contributes to the implemen-

tation of the idea of sustainable development in the framework of secondary and higher biological education.

As a result of a study carried out in 2019, we found that in basic school the content of the subject “Biology” is

primarily aimed at the formation of ideas about the main terminal values – “life”, “health”, “nature”; in high

school – about terminal values – “life”, “health”, and also about instrumental values – “persistence”. In our

2020 study, we investigated the inﬂuence of the bioethical content of biological disciplines on the formation of

value ideas of future biology students and future biology teachers about modern scientiﬁc innovations (using

the example of genome editing and biotechnological human improvement), the development of the ability to

evaluate them from a bioethical point of view. It is assumed that the formation of the ability to give a bioethi-

cal assessment of events taking place in the scientiﬁc world and ongoing discoveries is one of the main in the

implementation of the idea of sustainable development in the ﬁeld of education.

1 INTRODUCTION

At the beginning of 2020, the world did not even

suspect about the consequences of those global chal-

lenges and catastrophic changes that would fall on it

in an avalanche in a matter of weeks. On Decem-

ber 31, 2019, WHO was informed of the detection

of cases of pneumonia of unknown origin in Wuhan,

China. Two months later, on March 11, 2020, WHO

Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

will declare that the outbreak of COVID-19 can be de-

scribed as a pandemic (WHO, 2020). The subsequent

chain of events in 2020 became proof that biology in

today’s world is one of those sciences that develops

strategically important mechanisms for the survival of

all mankind as a whole and each individual individu-

ally. The reverence for biological science, with its re-

alities and possibilities, which has rapidly increased

in less than a year, actualizes the need to revise the

goals and values of biological education. In the light

of the current events, the understanding of the role of

biology in ensuring the sustainable future of mankind

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3476-3351

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0991-2343

becomes all the more urgent.

At the 70th session of the UN General Assembly,

the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was

adopted. It includes 17 new global goals that will be

included in the subject ﬁeld of education for sustain-

able development (Grachev et al., 2017).

According to the Incheon Declaration (UNESCO,

2015), education is considered as the main driving

force for transforming people’s lives and achieving

sustainable development goals. We are talking about

the development of skills, value orientations and be-

haviours that enable citizens to lead a full, healthy

life, make informed decisions and respond to local

and global challenges through education for sustain-

able development and education in the spirit of global

citizenship (Grachev et al., 2017).

Education for sustainable development is an in-

ternational vector of education and enlightenment of

a person throughout his life, which is implemented

in the interests of human capital development, in or-

der to preserve the cultural and natural heritage of the

planet for generations (Dzyatkovskaya and Zakhleb-

nyi, 2016).

There are several models for the implementation

of education for sustainable development: natural sci-

Komarova, E. and Kiv, A.

The Values of Biological Education from the Point of View of 2020 Events (or Biotechnological Human Improvement through the Eyes of Students).

DOI: 10.5220/0010924500003364

In Proceedings of the 1st Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology (AET 2020) - Volume 1, pages 365-380

ISBN: 978-989-758-558-6

365

ence, interdisciplinary and school-wide (Koryakina,

2012). In the framework of the natural science ap-

proach, education for sustainable development is con-

sidered the successor to environmental education (Ko-

ryakina, 2012).

On a global scale, changes in educational systems

aimed at adopting the idea of education for sustain-

able development have been taking place since the

early 2000s (Grachev et al., 2017; Koryakina, 2012).

Today, education for sustainable development has

two methodological problems (Abdurahmanov et al.,

2010).

The ﬁrst is connected with scientiﬁc foundations,

since a classical scientiﬁc school cannot fully meet

the principle of scientiﬁcness in modern conditions

(Abdurahmanov et al., 2010).

The second methodological problem is the futuris-

tic prognostic nature of education. The growing capa-

bilities of information technology in an irrepressible

progression require students to learn how to predict

the future steps ahead.

Therefore, it is relevant not only to teach to ana-

lyze and draw conclusions, but to predict, envisage

the future, and model the activity in the long run.

Another difﬁculty in the formation of education for

sustainable development is called the blurring of its

content: knowledge, methods of activity and value-

semantic attitudes (Dzyatkovskaya and Zakhlebnyi,

2016).

The concept of “sustainable development” is

twofold.

On the one hand, sustainability provides stability,

fundamentality, in a certain sense stagnation. On the

other hand, development is based on transformation,

change, improvement.

Out of this we conclude that a system that is in a

state of sustainable development includes unchanged

or hardly changed fundamentals and permanent de-

viations, summarizing as a result in a new quality.

What constitutes an unshakable foundation, and what

is subject to changes in the framework of science edu-

cation for sustainable development in general and bi-

ological in particular, these questions have to be an-

swered.

The effectiveness of any educational system is

evaluated according to the ﬁnal result. According

to the culturological theory of the education content,

the results of education are knowledge, reproductive

experience, experience in creative activity, and ex-

perience of an emotional-value attitude to the world

(Kraevsky and Lerner, 1981). The need to address

just this theory when designing the content of edu-

cation for sustainable development is indicated in a

number of studies (Dzyatkovskaya and Zakhlebnyi,

2016).

A school subject is a didactically adapted system

of scientiﬁc knowledge about the world and a per-

son’s place in it. The volume of scientiﬁc knowledge

is growing exponentially, therefore knowledge is the

most dynamic element of the system.

In the framework of the study, we consider the ex-

perience of an emotional-value attitude to the world as

the most constant, long-forming and system-forming

element of the knowledge system. We consider the

formation of an emotional-value component by means

of biology as one of the strategic goals of education

for sustainable development.

The experience of an emotional-value attitude to

the world involves the formation a schoolchild’s set

of value ideas that guide him in the present and fu-

ture. At the same time, a personal experience of

an emotional-value attitude to the world is formed

(Knyazeva, 2015).

The value ideas that make up the personal experi-

ence act as regulators of behaviour and factors in the

choice of a particular model of action. At the same

time, they are the result of a person’s assimilation of

social and cultural-historical experience.

The selection of the content of a school sub-

ject aimed at the formation of value ideas among

schoolchildren is based on the value potential of bio-

logical science: its cultural and historical component

(Knyazeva, 2015), current and future prospects for the

development of not only basic science, but science as

a whole as part of culture.

The transformation of the value potential of the

subject into the value ideas of students occurs with

the direct participation of the teacher, who acts as an

intermediary between the content of the subject and

the emotional and value sphere of the student.

The process has a subjective colouring, because it

is based, ﬁrstly, on the teacher’s understanding of the

value meanings of the educational process in general

and the educational process in biology in particular,

and secondly, on the teacher’s personal value ideas.

At different stages of ontogenesis, different values

have unequal relevance, which is due to a change in

leading human activities.

The chronological principle of constructing a sys-

tem of values is that values of an earlier age acquire a

subordinate position with respect to values of a later

period (Sevostianov and Gainanova, 2011).

In the context of science education for sustain-

able development, such a change has other reasons –

there is a constant change in the substantial and pro-

cess content of academic subjects. These changes are

caused not only by regular age-related changes in the

cognitive activity of students and the concentration of

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366

the subject content around generalizations of science

in high school compared with the main school in one

cycle, but also by a change in the approaches to the

selection and structuring of educational content from

cycle to cycle in historical terms.

Within the framework of education for sustain-

able development, the choice of the “cognitive” com-

ponent of the content of education is an obligatory

stage, since it helps to prevent the blurring of its sub-

ject and its transformation into simple information

about the problems of sustainable development (Dzy-

atkovskaya and Zakhlebnyi, 2016).

In 2019, we conducted a study to study the major-

ity structure of values formed by means of biology in

basic and high school. The respondents were students

– future biology teachers.

The study included theoretical and experimental

stages.

The theoretical stage was aimed at solving the fol-

lowing problems:

1) to distinguish between the categories of “value”,

“value representations of the individual”, “value

potential of the subject”, “value potential of basic

science”;

2) to differentiate the value representations of a per-

sonality according to the subjects of the educa-

tional process into “value representations of a stu-

dent” and “value representations of a teacher”;

3) to simulate the process of forming value ideas of

students in the framework of the subject.

Methods used at the theoretical stage: analysis of

scientiﬁc publications concerning formation of stu-

dents’ value ideas, according to the methodology for

evaluating the value ideas of an individual.

For the experimental stage, we developed a poll-

questionnaire. It included questions to study re-

spondents’ attitudes to 11 value categories that be-

long to two types (Rokeach, 1979): terminal (life,

health, beauty, nature, equality) and instrumental val-

ues (kindness, striving for truth, freedom, persever-

ance, justice, creative an approach).

The questionnaire was designed for future biology

teachers, whom we consider as a connecting element

in the process of transforming the value potential of a

subject into value ideas of students. In 2019, 40 stu-

dents of the Pedagogical University of the specialty

“Biology” took part in the survey. The questionnaire

was aimed at solving such problems:

1) to establish the majority structure of the school

biology course values (poll questions 1, 2, 3, 7, 8,

9);

2) to establish the majority structure of the value rep-

resentations of future biology teachers (poll ques-

tions 4, 5, 6).

We adhere to the approach according to which

value is “a ﬁrm conviction that a certain mode of be-

haviour or the ultimate goal of existence is preferable

from a personal or social point of view than the op-

posite way of behaviour, or the ultimate goal of exis-

tence” (Leontiev, 1998).

Values have a hierarchical nature, because, unlike

norms, they are a system: a personal system of val-

ues, a system of values of a society, a professional

system of values (Sevostianov and Gainanova, 2011).

The hierarchical structure of values also determines

that the value system itself should reﬂect the gen-

eral properties of hierarchical systems (Sevostianov

and Gainanova, 2011). Speaking about the concrete-

applied signiﬁcance of axiology in the school educa-

tional process, and therefore about the concrete em-

bodiment of the idea of sustainable development in

education, it is important to solve a number of issues.

For example, should a system of values formed by

means of a subject of biology, chemistry, ecology re-

ﬂect the properties of biological, chemical, ecological

systems? Or should one proceed from such general

properties of systems as integrity, emergence, subor-

dination, reliability, adaptability, etc., irrespective of

subject matter?

In the latter case, the value systems formed in the

educational process when studying different educa-

tional subjects of the natural science cycle are charac-

terized by the same properties with different content.

More speciﬁcally, the problem can be formulated as

follows: are terminal values such as life, health, na-

ture - the values formed by the means of all subjects

of the natural science cycle or only biology?

The study of this question will give an answer

about what values, value ideas should be formed in

the light of implementation of the idea of sustain-

able development in education when studying the

subjects of the natural science cycle individually and

as a whole. Let us note that there are successes

in ﬁnding the answer to this question. Education

for sustainable development should be subject-related

(Dzyatkovskaya and Zakhlebnyi, 2016; Ryzhakov,

1999; Ivanova and Osmolovskaya, 2012). Within

each subject-oriented invariant (ecologically-centred,

economically-centred) a varied content is built taking

into account the local educational and cultural con-

text. The subjectivity of education for sustainable de-

velopment helps to prevent the blurring of topics iden-

tiﬁed by UNESCO as priority within the main top-

ics of discussion in education for sustainable devel-

opment (UN Economic and Social Council, 2005).

The Values of Biological Education from the Point of View of 2020 Events (or Biotechnological Human Improvement through the Eyes of

Students)

367

In the model constructed around the “ecological

imperatives” invariant, the personal meanings of the

ecological imperative are the system-forming factor

in the content of education for sustainable develop-

ment (Dzyatkovskaya and Zakhlebnyi, 2016).

We found that in literature the concepts of “val-

ues”, “value orientations”, and “value representa-

tions” are often confused. The latter are not reducible

either to values, as really acting immanent regulators

of human activity, or to value orientations, as con-

scious representations of a subject about his own val-

ues.

Value representations of a personality are a com-

plex dynamic category, including its value orienta-

tions, value ideals, value stereotypes, value retrospec-

tive, etc. (Leontiev, 1998).

The valuable potential of an educational subject

is the subject content, which reveals the social and

personal signiﬁcance of the material being studied.

The valuable potential of basic science is the to-

tality of objective knowledge about social and natural

reality, the leading motive for which is the need to

know nature, rather than gaining control over natural

objects (Vlasova, 2014).

In the course of solving the second and third tasks,

we came to the conclusion that:

• teacher’s value ideas are factors of the formation

of students’ value ideas;

• formation of teacher’s value ideas that are ade-

quate to the modern level of science, society and

culture development, is one of the tasks of his pro-

fessional training;

• the process of forming students’ value ideas

within the framework of a school subject looks

like this: “value potential of basic science” →

factors of selecting the content of education →

“value potential of a school subject” → “value

ideas of a teacher” → “value ideas of a student”.

The content and results of a survey conducted at

the experimental stage are given below.

1. Do you agree that the content of the subject “Bi-

ology” is aimed at the formation of value ideas of

students?

Results: a) clearly “yes” – 63%; b) more likely

“yes” than “no” – 28%; c) rather “no” than “yes” –

9%; d) clearly “no” – 0%.

2. Is the content of the subject “Biology” in the basic

school, in your opinion, aimed at forming ideas

about what values? Arrange them in descending

order: kindness, life, health, aspiration for truth,

beauty, nature, freedom, equality, perseverance,

justice, creativity.

Results: nature – 86%, life – 74%, health – 74%,

beauty – 20%, creativity – 6%, freedom – 6%,

kindness – 6%, equality – 3%, striving for truth –

3%, perseverance – 3%, justice – 3%.

3. What values creating is the content of the subject

“Biology” in high school, in your opinion, aimed

at? Arrange them in descending order (the options

are the same as in question number 2).

Results: health – 54%, life – 49%, perseverance –

46%, nature – 40%, striving for truth – 17%,

beauty – 11%, equality – 11%, creativity – 9%,

justice – 9%, freedom – 6%, kindness – 3%.

The results of the answers to questions 2 and 3 are

summarized in ﬁgures 1, 2 and 3 (dark line – basic

school results, light line – high school results).

4. Arrange the values in order of decreasing their pri-

ority for yourself (the options are the same as in

question No. 2).

Results: life – health – nature – perseverance –

justice – equality – freedom – beauty – kindness –

creativity – striving for truth.

5. Select three synonyms for the word “valuable”

from the list: expensive, long-awaited, deserved,

promising, useful, pleasant, fair.

Results: expensive – 49%, long-awaited – 31%,

well-deserved – 37%, promising – 29%, useful –

60%, pleasant – 20%, fair – 20% (results are pre-

sented in ﬁgure 4).

6. Rate the following statements (I agree with – the

“+” sign, I do not agree with – the “-” sign):

a) valuable is what is important and useful for

me – 86%; b) valuable is what is important and

useful for my loved ones – 86%; c) valuable is

that which is important and useful for society –

74%; d) valuable is that which is important and

useful for nature – 94%.

So, in 2019 we came to the following conclusions:

1. In the basic school, the content of school biology

is primarily aimed at the formation of ideas about

terminal values – “life”, “health”, “nature”.

2. In high school, the content of the subject is pri-

marily aimed at the formation of ideas about ter-

minal values – “life”, “health”, as well as instru-

mental value – “perseverance”.

3. In the biology course of high school, as compared

with the basic one, the orientation toward the for-

mation of ideas about the terminal values of “life”,

“health”, and “nature” decreases.

4. In high school, the focus is on the formation

of ideas about instrumental values “striving for

truth” and “perseverance.”

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Figure 1: General results on the selection of values of a school biology course.

Figure 2: Majority system of terminal values.

5. In general, the school biology course is more fo-

cused on the formation of ideas about terminal

values than instrumental ones.

6. The results can be considered as conﬁrmation of

the chronological principle of building a system

of values in ontogenesis.

7. In the majority structure of value ideas of future

biology teachers, the three leaders are orientations

towards terminal values: life, health, nature.

In the course of an experimental study, it was

found that such instrumental values as a creative ap-

proach and the aspiration for truth do not ﬁnd a wor-

thy representation in the majority list of value ideas of

respondents.

On the one hand, such a result is relevant, on the

other hand, it is not very charitable from the point of

view of a positive assessment of the readiness of fu-

ture teachers for professional activities for the imple-

mentation of sustainable development ideas in biol-

ogy education.

The majority structure of the selected synonymous

The Values of Biological Education from the Point of View of 2020 Events (or Biotechnological Human Improvement through the Eyes of

Students)

369

Figure 3: Majority system of instrumental value.

Figure 4: The respondents’ choice of synonyms for the word “valuable”.

terms (task 5) demonstrates that the respondents at-

tribute to values the following: ﬁrstly, something hav-

ing a utilitarian focus (valuable – useful), secondly,

something which is expressed in signiﬁcant material

equivalent, and thirdly, something which involves the

application of certain efforts.

We saw further directions of research in 2019 in

the following (Komarova and Starova, 2020):

• establishing the causes of the revealed differences

between the value potential of the subject “Bi-

ology” and the value ideas of the participants in

the educational process, that is, between their de-

clared and real values;

• elucidation of the nature of reﬂection of differ-

ences in the fulﬁlment by teachers of biology of

professional activities in the framework of educa-

tion for sustainable development;

• the study of the ratio of declared and real values

(value ideas) of students;

• study of the microstructure of personality value

representations of a biology teacher and a student

studying biology (value orientations, value stereo-

types, value ideals, etc.);

• modelling the process of value ideas formation of

a biology teacher as a factor in the formation of

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370

students’ value ideas solving the problems of ed-

ucation for sustainable development;

• modelling the process of forming value repre-

sentations of students’ personality by means of

school biology in the framework of education for

sustainable development.

In 2020, humanity is facing a biological chal-

lenge. The coronavirus pandemic and ways to over-

come it immediately found a response in the global

scientiﬁc community. Prioritizing medical care dur-

ing a pandemic, restricting rights and freedoms, de-

veloping vaccines, conducting clinical trials, intro-

ducing new vaccine registration standards and their

widespread use in a pandemic (Emanuel et al., 2020;

Fidler, 2020), principles of distribution of vaccines

between countries and population groups, risks asso-

ciated with vaccination, social consequences ... These

and many other issues are united by one thing – the

bioethical component: risks, information, consent,

choice, fairness, voluntariness.

And so, in October 2020, another signiﬁcant event

took place in the natural science world, which stirred

up the scientiﬁc community. We are talking about

the award of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020

(www.nobelprize.org, 2021). “Emmanuelle Charp-

entier and Jennifer A. Doudna have discovered one

of gene technology’s sharpest tools: the CRISPR /

Cas9 genetic scissors. Using these, researchers can

change the DNA of animals, plants and microorgan-

isms with extremely high precision. This technology

has had a revolutionary impact on the life sciences, is

contributing to new cancer therapies and may make

the dream of curing inherited diseases come true”

(www.nobelprize.org, 2020).

This discovery in 2012 was a breakthrough not

only in the natural sciences industry (Meloni, 2014).

According to scientists, it turned the sphere of human-

itarian knowledge, updated a number of issues related

to the identiﬁcation of the human essence (Lukov,

2017; Buynyakova, 2017, 2019; Allhoff et al., 2009;

Masci, 2020).

The discovery of the mechanism of genetic scis-

sors and the study of its use for editing the human

genome will force us to take a fresh look at the signif-

icance in the life of each individual and society as a

whole of the terminal values “life”, “health”, “equal-

ity”, instrumental values “kindness”, “freedom”, “jus-

tice”. We assume that the issues of good, justice,

equality and the opposite issues of evil, unjustiﬁed,

infringement of rights will be updated with renewed

vigor in the public discussion of the prospects and

consequences of editing the human genome. In light

of this, the discussion of the possibilities and conse-

quences of “human improvement” will take on new

turns. In the context of the issue of the value po-

tential of biological education, we are interested in

the bioethical component of the problem of human

enhancement. Editing the human genome will make

it possible to modify the biological essence of a per-

son, but is this the general goal that humanity should

strive for? What are the risks and beneﬁts of further

research in this area? Does the beneﬁt outweigh the

risk, is the risk justiﬁed? Will the biotechnological en-

hancement not entail a leveling of the social compo-

nent of the human essence, will not the uniqueness of

the human personality as a whole be reduced to noth-

ing? Will the goals and values of human life change

and how?

These and similar questions naturally arise both

in philistine circles and among representatives of the

scientiﬁc community: biologists, philosophers, soci-

ologists. They become the subject of heated discus-

sions, and require the earliest possible discussion and

solution.

It should be noted that the study of the problem of

people’s attitudes towards the possibility of biotech-

nological enhancement is not new. The results of a

study of public opinion using focus groups on such ar-

eas of enhancement as genome editing, chipping, and

the use of artiﬁcial blood obtained in 2016 are very

interesting (Rainie et al., 2016; Funk et al., 2016). In

general, the results of the survey in 2016 showed a

negative attitude of respondents to the possibilities of

human improvement in all three areas.

So, 2020 is the year of the beginning of a new

wave of discussion of the bioethical component of

science, biological science. It is natural that social

and scientiﬁc events of 2020 cannot but affect differ-

ent spheres of public life. They ﬁnd reﬂection in the

revision, clariﬁcation, transformation of the previous

goals and value meanings of both the sphere of edu-

cation and subjective values.

Among the promising directions in the study of

the value orientations of biological education voiced

earlier in the article were named:

• study of the microstructure of value representa-

tions of the personality of a biology teacher;

• modeling of the process of forming value ideas of

a biology teacher.

What has been done in this direction, what results

have been obtained and what conclusions have been

formulated for further work in the direction of study-

ing the content and transformation of the value mean-

ings of biological education?

In 2020, the study was conducted on the basis of

the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University.

The Values of Biological Education from the Point of View of 2020 Events (or Biotechnological Human Improvement through the Eyes of

Students)

371

2 TECHNIQUE AND METHODS

At the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University,

preparation of students for professional pedagogical

activity is carried out within the framework of the

study of an elective pedagogical module. The study

of the module according to the curriculum takes place

in the 5th or 6th semester for students of the specialty

“Biology”. The content of the module is limited by

the narrow framework of study time (12 hours of lec-

tures and 12 hours of practical training). This is the

reason that the study of issues of bioethical content,

which we consider extremely important for the forma-

tion of value concepts of future teachers of biology,

we moved into the content of other academic subjects:

the discipline “Fundamentals of Theoretical Biology”

(72 hours) and “Bioethics” (60 hours). The number

of academic hours for the study of these disciplines is

much more than for the study of the pedagogical mod-

ule. Therefore, the axiological foundations of biologi-

cal science and education, their bioethical component

are extensively presented by us in these courses.

In the ﬁrst half of 2020/2021, within the 9th

semester for 4th year students of the specialty “Bi-

ology” in the 7th semester, the course “Fundamentals

of Theoretical Biology” was delivered. At the same

time, the course “Fundamentals of Bioethics” was

taught for 5th year students of the specialty “Biotech-

nology and Bioengineering”. The course content in-

cluded bioethical issues relevant in 2020 for the de-

velopment of biological science. After studying the

above disciplines, the students of the Institute of Liv-

ing Systems were invited to take part in the survey

“Biology and Ethics of Human Improvement”. The

survey was also attended by 1st year students, for

whom disciplines with bioethical content were not

read in the 1st semester.

The survey form is online using Google Forms

templates.

The purpose of the survey is to identify among the

student youth, who have chosen natural (chemical and

biological) sciences as the sphere of their professional

interests, a value attitude towards the development of

modern biology using the example of the problem of

human biotechnological enhancement.

Tasks of the survey:

• to identify students’ understanding of the essence

of the bioethical component of scientiﬁc research

(using the example of the problem of human

biotechnological enhancement);

• to establish the necessity, format and topics of dis-

cussion of modern bioethical problems.

80 students took part in the survey (57 1st year stu-

dents, specialty “Biology”, “Chemistry”, “Biotech-

nology and Bioengineering”, 9 5th year students, spe-

cialty “Biotechnology and Bioengineering”, 14 4th

year students, specialty “Biology”). Closed and open

questions were proposed.

3 RESULTS

The content and results of the survey are presented

below.

1. Do you think that human improvement can be a

modern biotechnological project?

Variants of answer: unequivocally “yes”, unequiv-

ocally “no”, rather “yes” than “no”, rather “no” than

“yes”, I ﬁnd it difﬁcult to answer, my own version.

The results of the answer are shown in ﬁgure 5.

The results show that 5th year students are more

cautious in their assessment of considering human im-

provement procedures as a biotechnology project. At

the same time, caution is manifested not only in a

decrease in the choice of a sharply positive answer

(22.2% versus 43.9% and 50% in the other groups).

Characterized by the complete absence of a choice of

a sharply negative answer, and a weakly negative an-

swer (0% versus 10.5% and 7.1% in the other groups).

The results of the answers of the 1st and 4th year

groups are close in values.

The reason for the difference in answers between

the 1st, 4th and 5th courses may be in the speciﬁcs

of the specialties for which students are trained. The

5th year students of the specialty “Bioengineering and

Bioinformatics” approach the reality of “improving”

a person from a utilitarian and practical point of view.

Students of the specialty “Biology”, not having sufﬁ-

cient professional knowledge, more easily assess the

potential of human enhancement.

In general, the majority of the respondents con-

sider human enhancement as a possible modern

biotechnological project.

2. Do you consider it possible from an ethical point

of view to intervene in the human genome, edit it?

Answer options see in item 1.

The results of answering this question allow us to

state that for students of the specialty “Bioengineer-

ing and Biotechnology” it is more acceptable from

an ethical point of view than for students of the spe-

cialty “Biology”, is the possibility of editing the hu-

man genome. It can be assumed that this result is due

to the same reason that was named in the previous

question. Future biotechnologists and bioengineers

consider the human genome as an object for instru-

mental impact due to the peculiarities of their profes-

sional training.

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Figure 5: Results of the answer to the question “Do you think that human improvement can be a modern biotechnological

project?”.

Figure 6: Results of the answer to the question “Do you consider it possible from an ethical point of view to intervene in the

human genome, edit it?”.

The results in groups of biology students turned

out to be very interesting. So, for 1st year students,

the answers with a sharply positive answer and a

weakly positive answer in total are the same as for

biotechnology students (36.8% and 40.4% for biol-

ogists and 44.4% and 33.3% for biotechnologists).

For fourth-year biologists, the share of sharply posi-

tive answers is only 7.1% (versus 36.8% for ﬁrst-year

students and 44.4% for ﬁfth-year students). The to-

tal amount of negative answers for fourth-year biol-

ogists is 42.8% (sharply negative 7.1%, slightly neg-

ative 35.7%) versus the total amount of negative an-

swers among ﬁrst-year students – 19.3% (sharply neg-

ative 3.5%, weakly negative 15.8%) and 5th year stu-

dents 22.2% (sharply negative 0%, slightly negative

22.2%).

A possible reason may be that for the 4th year

students, the bioethics course was not read until the

moment of the questionnaire, in contrast to the 5th

year students. But for the 4th year students the course

“Foundations of Theoretical Biology” was taught,

the content of which laid the foundations of mod-

ern bioethical knowledge. In addition, the methods of

practical work with 4th year students included hold-

ing round tables in full-time format, in contrast to

the defense of project work in an online format by

5th year students. Also, for 4th year students, such

a form of work was introduced as writing an essay

on bioethical topics and its defense. The form of in-

termediate control for 4th year students in mastering

The Values of Biological Education from the Point of View of 2020 Events (or Biotechnological Human Improvement through the Eyes of

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373

the discipline “Foundations of Theoretical Biology”

was written control papers with open questions of a

debatable nature. For 5th year students, intermediate

control was not carried out.

In parallel with the above explanation, the prob-

lem arises of explaining the results for 1st year stu-

dents. We believe that this issue requires further

study.

We assume that the study of the course “Foun-

dations of Theoretical Biology” has a positive effect

on the formation of elements of bioethical knowledge

of students – future biologists. This issue also re-

quires further study, especially considering the fact

that the same students will have to study the course

“Bioethics” in the 8th semester, in an amount of hours

that is 2 times the volume of the discipline “Funda-

mentals of Bioethics” for 5th year students of the spe-

cialty “Biotechnology and Bioengineering”.

3. Do you think that interference with the human

genome is dangerous?

Variants of answer: yes, no, I ﬁnd it difﬁcult to

answer.

The results of the answer to this question demon-

strate the signiﬁcant caution of the respondents re-

garding the safety of human biotechnological en-

hancement. It is noteworthy that 5th year biotechnol-

ogy students are most cautious. 1st year students are

the most optimistic. How do we explain these results?

We assume that the reason is the lack of experience

in professional biological training, the immaturity of

the position on ambiguous scientiﬁc problems, insuf-

ﬁciently formed scientiﬁc critical thinking.

4. What kind of danger can occur when trying to

biotechnological enhancement of a person? There

are several options to choose from.

• A person’s loss of his self-sufﬁciency as a nat-

ural phenomenon;

• Difﬁcultly predictable biological conse-

quences;

• Aggravation of ethical problems, for example,

associated with limited access to the genome

improvement procedure - a service only for the

rich;

• The problem of elitism of “improved” genomes

in comparison with natural genomes, increas-

ing social inequality;

• Rough interference with natural mechanisms

developed over millions of years will change

the course of the evolutionary process and dis-

rupt its course;

• No dangers, only advantages.

The results of the answer to the question differ in

the groups of students. For 1st and 5th year students,

the greatest danger is difﬁcultly predicted biological

consequences. For 4th year students, the greatest

danger is problems of possible social inequality and

the threat of the emergence of elitism of “improved”

genomes. For 1st and 5th year students, such a danger

as a person’s loss of his self-sufﬁciency as a natural

phenomenon is in last place. For 4th year students,

this danger is very signiﬁcant, it is in second place in

the choice.

The reason for this difference, we consider the

work with students to study the discipline “Founda-

tions of Theoretical Biology”, as mentioned above.

The content of the discipline provided for the study of

the topic of bioethical orientation and forms of work,

involving the conduct of a free discussion, expressing

one’s own position on the issue of discussion. Among

the practical forms of studying the discipline “Funda-

mentals of Theoretical Biology” listed above in para-

graph 2, we used such a form of extracurricular work

as watching feature ﬁlms – products of world cin-

ema – with a pronounced bioethical orientation, fol-

lowed by a collective discussion of controversial is-

sues. The study of the effectiveness of such forms

of work in the formation of students’ value ideas, in

increasing their bioethical literacy and responsibility

requires further work. We consider it premature to

talk about ﬁnal results.

5. Do you think that the problem of biotechnologi-

cal enhancement should be transparent for public

discussion?

Variants of answer: yes, no, I ﬁnd it difﬁcult to

answer.

According to the results of the questionnaire,

more than 70% of all respondents in each of the

groups of students are inclined to open public dis-

cussion of the problems of biotechnological enhance-

ment. We explain the differences in the choice of a

negative answer by the fact that biotechnology stu-

dents, due to their professional training, are more in-

clined to consider the human genome as an object for

instrumental inﬂuence. In this case, as for any other

biological object with which instrumental actions are

carried out, discussions are permissible only in a nar-

row circle of professionals who have education and

experience in carrying out the appropriate manipula-

tions.

It is noteworthy that only 1st year students do not

consider biotechnological enhancement as a poten-

tially dangerous procedure, do not see any negative

consequences of its application. A possible explana-

tion can be considered the same increase in the vol-

ume of special knowledge among 4th and 5th year

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374

Figure 7: Results of the answer to the question “Do you think that interference with the human genome is dangerous?”.

Figure 8: Results of the answer to the question “What kind of danger can occur when trying to biotechnological enhancement

of a person?”.

students, the greater criticality and alternativeness of

their professional thinking.

6. In your opinion, the possibility of genome editing

is:

• Solving many problems that were impossible to

solve earlier (creating resistant genomes to in-

fections, senile diseases, malignant tumors);

• One of the mechanisms for providing access to

the resources and beneﬁts of mankind to a small

oligarchy;

• The reason to receive the Nobel Prize, but in

fact it will not come to practical use.

The results of the answer to question 6 demon-

strate the conﬁdence of the respondents that genome

editing will provide an opportunity to solve a number

of problems in which biological science was previ-

ously powerless. However, 4th year students in their

answers also speak out in favor of the fact that such

manipulation will increase inequality between people,

lead to stratiﬁcation of society and can cause social

conﬂicts. The results of 28.6% are indicative enough

to be taken into account in assessing the formation of

students’ understanding of the value potential of bi-

ological science and modern scientiﬁc achievements.

We assume that the reasons for the differences in the

group of 4th year students are similar to those named

in paragraphs 2, 4.

7. Would you like to know more information about

human improvement through biotechnology?

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375

Figure 9: Results of the answer to the question “Do you think that the problem of biotechnological enhancement should be

transparent for public discussion?”.

Figure 10: Results of the answer to the question “In your opinion, the possibility of genome editing is?”.

• Yes;

• No.

Students of all groups are unambiguous in their

desire to learn more about the possibilities of biotech-

nological enhancement. However, the results show

that the group of 4th year students has the largest

number of answers with negative choice in compar-

ison with other groups. We assume that the reasons

for this difference are similar to those named in para-

graphs 2, 4.

8. What kind of information would be interesting for

you?

• The history of the human enhancement;

• Ethical issues related to the improvement of the

genome;

• Mechanisms and types of enhancement;

• Risks of enhancement.

For students of all groups, the most interesting

questions are related to risks, mechanisms and types

of enhancement. The least interesting topics are re-

lated to the history of human enhancement. We can

explain the results obtained by the fact that it is in-

herent in student youth to think in terms of “here and

now”, to receive actual, not retrospective knowledge.

9. In what form would you like to learn more about

enhancement?

• Lecture;

• Round table;

• Webinar;

• Independent reading of specialized literature.

The results of the answer to this question allow

us to state the presence of a tendency: from 1 to 5

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376

Figure 11: Results of the answer to the question “Would you like to know more information about human improvement

through biotechnology?”.

Figure 12: Results of the answer to the question “What kind of information would be interesting for you?”.

courses, the importance of monologue teaching meth-

ods decreases and the importance of dialogic methods

increases when studying issues of bioethical content,

in particular, concerning biotechnological enhance-

ment.

We assume that such results can be associated

with the use of active teaching methods – round ta-

bles, defense of design works, presentation of essays

in the study of the discipline “Fundamentals of Theo-

retical Biology” in the 4th year and “Fundamentals of

Bioethics” in the 5th year.

We assume that the redistribution of the types of

classroom work with students towards an increase in

the number of hours for the practical part by reducing

the lecture part of the course can be effective in shap-

ing the value concepts of students, in increasing their

bioethical literacy and responsibility.

10. Name three words that come to mind when you

say “human improvement”:

The results of the answer to this question are pre-

sented in the table 1. Note that in the table in bold

those words are highlighted that within each group

occurred 2 or more times. In addition, we considered

the same root words as identical (for example, new

and novelty, cyborg and cyborgization, etc.).

The results of the answers to this question are

such that in the group of 1st year students there is a

maximum number of single-root words used – 21.8%

(in comparison with the group of 4th year students –

3.0%, and 5th year – 0%).

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377

Figure 13: Results of the answer to the question “In what form would you like to learn more about enhancement?”.

Also, among all the answers of students from each

of the groups, we isolated words-associations with a

uniquely negative content (for example, social strat-

iﬁcation, break, vice, etc.). These association words

are shown in italics in the table.

As a result, we received the following results:

in the group of 1st year students the least number

of words with negative associative meaning (8%),

among 4th year and 5th year students – 18.8% and

12.5%, respectively.

We consider this result not accidental. The rea-

sons mentioned in clauses 2 and 4 can serve as expla-

nations.

At the same time, the results obtained on the last

question will be useful for a deeper lexical and seman-

tic analysis of the language units used by students. We

assume that this will provide interesting data on the

formation of an associative image in people regard-

ing scientiﬁc innovations, in our case, on the possi-

bility of genome editing and human biotechnological

enhancement.

We attribute to the difﬁculties of the conducted re-

search:

• participation in the experiment for one group of

students from the 4th and 5th year of the specialty

“Biology”, “Biotechnology and Bioengineering”;

• no repetition in experimental learning (no techni-

cal replication). It will be conditionally possible

to theoretically implement it only in the next aca-

demic year, comparing the actual results for today

with the future ones;

• the implementation of the previous point is un-

likely to lead to reliable results, since the growth

rates of scientiﬁc biological knowledge are high.

To predict how the other spheres of public life

interconnected with the scientiﬁc sphere will

change seems at the moment an almost impossi-

ble task;

• attempts to carry out quantitative account of the

cash generated by the person values are associated

with methodological difﬁculties, since the cate-

gory of “value” – it is still the category of quality,

not quantity.

4 CONCLUSIONS

The conclusions we formulated as a result of our re-

search at the end of 2020:

• the interviewed students recognize the importance

of the bioethical component of modern scientiﬁc

developments in biology;

• the majority of the students surveyed express

their readiness and desire to discuss issues of the

bioethical nature of scientiﬁc innovations. This

makes it possible to assume the possibility of a

positive inﬂuence on the formation of terminal

and instrumental values of students through ap-

propriate training;

• introduction into the curriculum of training stu-

dents of biological specialties of the discipline

“Fundamentals of theoretical biology” with the

study of issues of bioethical content is advisable.

The positions of students who studied this disci-

pline (4th year) on a number of issues of bioethi-

cal content differed from those who did not study

the discipline (1st year and 5th year). It should be

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378

Table 1: Results of the answer to the question “Name three

words that come to mind when you say “human improve-

ment?”.

Group of

1st year

students

Immortality, business, bioengineer-

ing, biology, biotechnology, biohacking,

bioethics, the ﬁght against cancer cells,

the future, eternity, power, perhaps

only education, opportunities, neces-

sity, endurance, genetics, genetically

ideal people, genetic diseases, genius,

genetic engineering, genome, money,

kindness, longevity, eugenics, univer-

sal soldier, social stratiﬁcation, life,

health, perfection, danger, emperor, cy-

borg, colonization, treatment, longevity,

better life, mechanism, dream, brain-

computer interfaces, science, inequality,

novelty, morality, education, opportuni-

ties, danger, perfection, absence of dis-

eases, increase of mental abilities, ben-

eﬁt, help, vice, posthumanism, revolu-

tion, limits, problem, progress, pros-

thesis, processor, development, adapta-

tion, superiority, break, solution, risk,

self-development, superintelligence, in-

creased life span, superman, superin-

telligence, strength, death, perfection,

ability, old age, with perseverance, hap-

piness, transhumanism, mind, civiliza-

tion, chipping, chips, evolution, ecol-

ogy, experiment

Group of

4th year

students

Safety, biotechnology, neurointerface,

diseases, future, HIV, power, oppor-

tunities, longevity, eugenics, ideality,

change, immunity, end of the world,

I will not see, inaccessibility, victory

over hereditary diseases, the appearance

of “superpowers” in a person, obstacle,

progress, prosthesis, against nature, de-

velopment, regression, editing the hu-

man genome, birth, complexity, im-

provement, technology, stability, physi-

cal condition, perfection, ethics

Group of

5th year

students

CRISPR/Cas, adaptation, upgrade,

botox, genome, eugenics, cure, lipo-

suction, not now, useful, risks, self-

development, superman, improvement,

what will God say?, enhancement

noted that the students who studied were more in-

clined to understand the social consequences and

risks of biological innovations than others. We ex-

plain this by the content of the discipline, which

considered the history of biology, the direction of

development of modern branches of biology, as

well as the forms of education used. This was

mentioned above when explaining the results of

answers to individual questions;

• to assess the level of formation of terminal and

instrumental values among students of biological

specialties seems to us a global large-scale issue.

It is unambiguous that it is impossible and im-

practical to make a quantitative assessment of the

formed values. The need for a qualitative assess-

ment rests on the question of whether the values

formed through the educational process should

differ among students of biological specialties. In

other words, should different terminal and instru-

mental values be formed in students – future biol-

ogists and students – future teachers?

5 OUTLOOK

Summing up, we note that our further research in the

direction of the value meanings of biological educa-

tion posed more questions than answered. We can

only assert unequivocally that the training of future

biologists, including those who will continue their

professional activities in the ﬁeld of education, must

include a thorough bioethical training. It will allow

future biologists-scientists and future biology teach-

ers to navigate the present and future world, to make

informed choices, and make informed decisions.

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