The BIOSEM project highlights the importance of integrating education in the field of environmental bioethics into secondary school curriculums. The goal of the project was mainly in the support of secondary school teachers and the preparation of curriculum for students. The projects main purpose was to build in students bioethics competencies, including critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and environmental awareness. For each of the seven identified areas, we wanted to establish knowledge, skills and attitudes students should acquire during the prepared lessons. By working with young people we wanted to help them increase their level of knowledge and skills, which would help them orient themselves more easily and react in situations in which it is necessary to make decisions and act based on ethical principles. In summary the project wanted to achieve the following: promoting environmental awareness and action, integrating bioethics into education, creating educational resources promoting knowledge, competences and appropriate attitudes aligned with values and joint EU (and global (SDG)) policies, and supporting teacher and institution capacities.
We wanted to integrate education in the field of environmental bioethics into secondary school curriculums. We saw that bioethic topic such as Globalisation and Bioethics, Climate Change, Human Development, Ecosystem Health and Water Resources, Science and Technology, Animal living, and Minimalist living are quite new in the field of educational curricula. Teachers therefore are usually not equipped to present those topics to students. The needs for new approaches and methods was apparent. Education needs to produce critical (young) thinkers that will soon live by and spread ethical concepts in society and therefore be in support to values of the European Union, accordance with its initiatives and indeed needs of our world. It is important that, from the earliest years of a child's life, we in education work to ensure that pupils recognise the importance of acting responsibly towards themselves, other people, other living beings, and the natural environment as a whole. In addition to concrete knowledge in specific areas, they also need an awareness of the fundamental ethical values that ensure that knowledge is used for the benefit of people, other living beings, and the ecosystem as a whole.