Thought Experiments

A thought experiment is an exercise in critical thinking designed to develop students' skills in:

• Raising ethical questions and problems, and formulating them clearly and accurately;
• Collecting and assessing relevant information about the issue;
• Arriving at reasoned solutions and conclusions through argument;
• Thinking freely and maintaining an open mind through recognising the implications and practical consequences of their own assumptions and points of view;
• Communicating their thinking effectively to others.

Students should be encouraged to approach this is in a similar way to the way they would embark on an experiment in the lab: thinking through predictions and using observations from discussion to test them.

There are several examples in BEEP

• On Bias
• On Development of the early embryo
• On Stem cell therapy
• On Applications of DNA profiling
• On the use of Genetic Engineering  in sports
  

Why not try developing your own based on these models? We would be very pleased to include them on BEEP.

 Teaching Argument