Socio-scientific Issues based Teaching and Learning: Hydrofracturing as an Illustrative context of a Framework for Implementation and Research (original) (raw)

The environment and politics in science education: the case of teaching fracking

Cultural Studies of Science Education, 2021

Hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking’), like other complex social and environmental issues, is a controversy about science which raises educational questions about how best to prepare young people to understand, respond to and, where necessary, act (or not) in response. It raises political questions. We present a state-of-the-art review of research literature on fracking and education using systematic strategies, with a view to finding out how it is framed in educational situations and how politics enters the science classroom. This serves as an illustrative case of how contested scientific and technological interventions with implications for the environment and society are treated in school science. The review is supplemented by interviews with 10 teachers of science and engineering working in schools or colleges near sites of operational exploratory fracking. We find that the research literature on teaching hydraulic fracturing is sparse, with only 25 studies relating to teaching and ...

Promoting Socioscientific Issue-based Science Education – Finding Opportunities in Assessment

Eurasian Journal of Science and Environmental Education

There have been attempts to integrate assessment with teaching to enhance learning. In this study, we have attempted to use assessment as a strategy to foster socioscientific issue (SSI)-based learning. The available research suggests that teachers have a positive attitude towards the incorporation of SSI-based discussions in their classrooms simultaneously stating challenges like limited time, rigid syllabus, exam pressure, unavailability of related resource material, and intellectual demand on the part of the teacher as well as students, etc. We argue that ‘guided assessment’ as a pro-learning assessment approach could be used to promote SSI-based learning in the face of challenges. This paper describes and explores the efficacy of the ‘guided assessment’ task included in an SSI-based learning module developed on issues related to groundwater. This module was trialled with thirty secondary science students belonging to the lower socioeconomic background. The data related to the ‘g...

A framework for teaching socio-environmental problem-solving

Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 2020

The urgent environmental challenges we now face, from climate change to biodiversity loss, involve people and the planet, the social, and the environmental. Teaching students to become effective socio-environmental problem-solvers requires clarity about concepts and competencies needed to understand and tackle these challenges. Here, we propose an educational framework that describes what students should learn and how they should apply this knowledge to address socio-environmental problems. This framework emphasizes the process of problem-solving and is based on socio-environmental (S-E) synthesis, an integrative, transdisciplinary approach to understanding and tackling complex socio-environmental problems. In addition to identifying the knowledge, skills, dispositions, and practices necessary for S-E problem-solving at the undergraduate and graduate levels, we clarify how one draws on such competencies to inquire about problems and generate solutions for them. Our primary goal is t...

A Framework for Socio-Scientific Issues Based Education

2013

AbstractScience instruction based on student exploration of socio-scientific issues (SSI) has been presented as a powerful strategy for supporting science learning and the development of scientific literacy. This paper presents an instructional framework for SSI based education. The framework is based on a series of research studies conducted in a diverse range of classrooms that made use of several different SSI. Based on the findings and recommendations of these studies, a framework that captures key elements of successful SSI based teaching and learning is advanced. The framework consists of three core aspects - design elements, learner experiences, and teacher attributes which together are shaped by various contexts such as the classroom, the school/district, the community, and state/national policy. The paper describes each of these aspects and provides relevant examples. The framework presents elements necessary for SSI-based instruction with the aim of informing classroom pra...

Teaching Controversial Socio-Scientific Issues in Biology and Geology Classes: A Case Study

REIS, 2009

Several educators in science have called for the inclusion of controversial socio-scientific issues' discussion in science curricula because of its potential for creating a more real, humane image of scientific activity and for promoting scientific literacy, an essential tool for a responsible citizenship regarding decision-making processes related to socio-scientific issues. However, despite all the favourable opinions and empirical evidence concerning the educational potential for the discussion of socio-scientific issues, these activities are not part of many science lessons, even when the controversial socio-scientific issues comprise the curricular content and the teachers consider discussion of these issues important.

The Effect of Using Socio-Scientific Issues Approach in Teaching Environmental Issues on Improving the Students’ Ability of Making Appropriate Decisions Towards These Issues

International Education Studies, 2014

This study aimed to identify nature of students' decisions patterns towards environmental issues and the possibility to improve these decisions during teaching process using Socio-Scientific Issues Approach. And to achieve this, the researcher prepared and developed tools of the study represented by a test of open questions focused on socio-scientific issues in environmental subjects and a school unit about environmental issues according to Socio-Scientific Issues Approach. Validity and reliability of the study were asserted using the appropriate ways. The population of the study, which consisted of the students of Educational Sciences department in Educational Sciences Faculty in World Islamic Sciences and Education University in Jordan in the first semester in 2012/2013, was 576 male and female students. The sample of the study, which consisted of (40) male and female student, was selected purposefully. Results of the study showed using Socio-Scientific Issues approach enhanced students' ability in improving their decisions towards environmental issues and the results showed existence of four patterns of students' decisions: decisions based on wrong understanding of scientific concepts and their applications, logical linear (formal) decisions taking into account few limited dimensions, decisions on a limited level of controversy. Issuing decisions include scientific thinking takes into account the integrated comprehensive dimension. In light of these results, the researcher recommended paying attention to Socio-Scientific Issues Approach (SSI) as an axis to teach the scientific concepts and issues at the university level and to train the teachers on using it.

Primary education students’ engagement with socio-scientific discussion as an approach to learning for sustainability

Scottish Educational Review

Sustainability is a complex, ill-defined concept that has been the subject of much debate over the last two decades (Wals and Jickling, 2002). The ill-defined nature of sustainability manifests itself within socio-scientific issues where conflicting reality constructions, values, norms, and interests interact. Initial teacher education as part of Higher education has a responsibility to critique the values and knowledge claims inherent within contemporary science issues and can meet this responsibility by supporting students to engage with socio-scientific discussions within the context of learning for sustainability. This paper explores how forty-four primary education students engage with discussions focused upon climate change. Students’ prior educational experience, together with their disposition towards open-mindedness impacts heavily upon the way they interact during discussions. Online teacher-mediated discussion fora are useful for supporting primary education students’ abi...

Learning across disciplines in socio-environmental problem framing

Socio-Environmental Systems Modelling

Modelling complex socio-environmental problems requires integration of knowledge across disparate fields of expertise. A key challenge is understanding how social learning across disciplines occurs in scientific research teams, in order that integrated knowledge is co-created. This article introduces a new framework for training researchers to integrate their knowledge across disciplines, based on current understanding of how inter- and transdisciplinary learning in research teams occurs. The framework was generated from a synthesis of learning, cognitive, and social science theories, and combines facilitated, structured negotiation processes with co-creation of boundary objects. It was used in two, 9 to 10-day intensive training workshops for doctoral students. This article describes the framework, workshop design, analysis of data collected during the workshops related to knowledge integration processes, what has been learned from the results, and the impact on participants. All p...

Evolution of a Model for Socio-Scientific Issue Teaching and Learning

Socio-scientific teaching and learning (SSI-TL) has been suggested as an effective approach for supporting meaningful learning in school contexts; however, limited tools exist to support the work of designing and implementing this approach. In this paper, we draw from a series of four design based research projects that have produced SSI curriculum materials, research findings, and design insights. The paper describes the creation and evolution of a model for SSI-TL. The model highlights a sequence of learning experiences that should be featured in SSI-TL and the kinds of learning objectives that should result. Student learning experiences should include encountering a focal SSI; engaging in science practices, disciplinary core ideas and crosscutting concepts as well as socio-scientific reasoning practices; and synthesizing key ideas and practices through a culminating exercise. The proposed learning objectives align with Next Generation Science Standards and also reflect the important social dimensions of SSI.