Designing and helping design controversy mapping


Working on a socially acute question requires the trainer and the trainee to have an understanding of the problem in the light of the ethical, scientific, technical, social and emotional controversies at stake within the scientific world and of the social actors involved in the issue of animal welfare. An overview of the controversies can be formalized through a controversy map. This map can have different interests. (1) It allows the trainer to prepare training in a concern of impartiality, taking into account the different social representations and scientific conceptions. (2) It therefore also makes sense to have trainees draw up their own controversy map. It allows the trainees to take a critical look at their points of view: in which ethics do they fit? What are they opposed to? Which actors do they put forward? How do they present them? What do they fail to highlight? What controversies are cited? Are they conceived as such, or does the learner take sides and in what direction? It can help them to be more impartial in their future teaching.
This map can then become a real reading grid for movies of farmers’ practices and of experts.
How to achieve it? There is no single way to design it. This requires a significant amount of reading in both the media and research articles, and even interviews with actors. To help the reader, we propose an example . But there are probably as many controversy maps as there are designers.