Habits & Practices Behaviors for Safe & Effective Research
Habits & Practices Objectives
- Distinguish between a habit and practice, providing examples of how each are important in safety and science investigations.
- Define stewardship and provide examples.
- Define ethics and provide a field-based example of ethics in practice.
For safety to be effective, including the safety items you are adding to your own safety checklist this week, there needs to be both habits and practices. These two sets of behaviors are critical in safe and effective research.
Habit
Something that is done regularly and routinely, often without much additional thought.
Practice
Something that need improvement through repetition and refinement. May become a habit over time.
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we knew about washing hands, but had to practice the frequency, duration, area washed, most effective soap product, how to turn off the water after washing, etc. Over time hand-washing became more of a habit. Habits can slip over time and may need occasional practice to reinforce and improve.
We were going to show you habits & practices related to care of our crested gecko pair, but apparently the habit of bolting their terrarium door after mealtime needed more practice and they are now roaming the house.
So, instead, here are the guinea pigs.
Habits need to be broken when the risk outweighs the reward. Here is a real-world example of a “good” habit becoming problematic.
“Habits of Mind” are valued in many fields, including science. This includes curiosity, consistency, wonder, and several other characteristics that will come up in the course. One of these is serendipity, being open to new and surprising occurrences. We were trying to decide which spiders to feature in the course, and when this jumping spider showed up at the end of a video, it was an opportunity to introduce some of the most interesting animals in our environment.
An opinion is a view or judgement that can be based in facts, but also can be based on feelings and beliefs. One of the key aspects of becoming an academic is realizing that people have different opinions (like whether a wasp is beautiful), and that it is interesting to find out what people base their opinions on.
Stewardship
This video defines stewardship as used in the context of environmental biology.
One way to think about stewardship is to list the aspects of nature that you value the most and consider what you are willing to do to maintain these natural resources.
There are many critical characteristics that impact how science is actually done. One of these is ethics.
ETHICS DEFINED:
Ethics is a branch of philosophy that explores whether behaviors are right or wrong. This includes determining and following a moral course of action.
Ethics can be applied to field adventures in how we treat organisms, their environment, and other people.
Next we will explore planning and safety related to field work, and meet moss.
Check your knowledge. Can you:
- distinguish between a habit and practice, providing examples of how each are important in safety and science investigations?
- define stewardship and provide examples?
- define ethics and provide a field-based example of ethics in practice?
Go back to the Safety Page
Go forward to the Field Work Page
Research Lecture Guide Contents
This guide and lecture material are assessed on the weekly quiz.
Back to Module 1
This week’s overview
This Guide
Research
