Biological determinism and reductionism
I’ve just been teaching my students about biological determinism vs. free will and biological reductionism vs. holism. At first, it was quite challenging to help them see the difference between claiming that all behaviour is biologically determined and suggesting that a particular behaviour can be explained by reducing it to a single ‘primary’ biological cause. I found that two strategies helped them grasp these concepts more effectively: using diagrams and role play.
Diagrams
I split the class into four groups and asked each to create a visual representation of one of the four explanations for behaviour: biological determinism, free will, biological reductionism, holism. Students could draw their own image, use an AI-generated one, or select any free Creative Commons images found online. However, they were instructed not to rely on written explanations or titles—the diagram should speak for itself. Some examples are givern here. I created these using stock images and SmartArt. Students will probably do better than this, and they should quickly explain their image to the class.
Role Play
I divided the class in half, and gave half of the students a set of four cards, with one of the terms (biological determinism, free will, biological reductionism, holism) on each. If their pictures or diagrams were good, it is a nice touch if you have time to make a few copies and use these on one side of each card. The other half of the class each gets a statement to read out that illustrates one of the ideas. I used Chat GPT to create the statements, by asking for a short statement that someone with depression (the mental disorder we will be studying) would say if they believed this was biologically determined, or if they believed they could overcome it with their free will, or by living holistically and taking a whole person healthy approach, or if they believed it was all down to neurotransmitter malfunction. Once I checked them, I then asked for more statements, using the same prompts. The students “role play” the statements and the other half of the class holds up the correct card. Then the role-playing student should say if it is correct or not. With large classes, this may be done in groups. You will be reinforcing their learning throughout the course, when biological factors are explored through the contexts.