Feature WWW.Life Sciences Education

guide students through the process of thoughtfully analyz-ing ethical controversies by 1) identifying the relevant facts, which helps students separate information from emotional response; 2) identifying stakeholders—the people or insti-tutions affected by the outcome of a situation; 3) clarifying stakeholder values, interests, and concerns; and 4) making a decision that is supported by a well-reasoned justification. Employing stakeholders to introduce potentially opposing viewpoints can eliminate or diffuse tensions that might oth-erwise arise if students were asked to represent and defend their own personal views. While designed for grades 7–12 or 9–12, many of these materials could be used or easily adapt-ed for use with undergraduates. The Teacher Center section of the Northwest Association for Biomedical Research (NWABR; www.nwabr.org; Figure 1) includes six sets of excellent bioethics materials. An Ethics Primer (202 pp.) provides an easy to understand introduction to ethics, including a useful table that compares five ethical perspectives. The 31 classroom strategies provide options for structuring ethical discussions; grading rubrics are available for five writing assignments. Also included are four ethi-cal decision-making frameworks; a detailed grading guide is provided for one of these. Although additional online resources are listed, many of the URLs no longer function. Bioethics 101 (75 pp.) provides a sequenced set of five inter-active lessons that culminate in a case study about a clinical trial of a drug. The curriculum incorporates “best of ” strate-gies recommended by teachers who had used the Primer fo