High-school graduates' beliefs about science-technology-society. II. the interaction among science, technology and society (original) (raw)

What views do high-school graduates hold on the nature of the interaction of science, technology, and society? What role do they see both science and technology playing in ensuring their quality of life? Should their society control the direction of both scientific research and technological development? If so, how would this be done? This article addresses these and other issues.' Specifically, the article reports on Canadian student responses to item 1 and items 6 to 12 of the Views on Science-Technology-Society (VOSTS). These items focus on the interaction of science, technology, and society. The study's theoretical framework, sampling procedures, instrument design, and data analysis were presented in the first article of the series (Aikenhead, Fleming & Ryan, 1987). Some essential features are summarized here. A sample of 10,800 students, who were in their graduating year of high school, was drawn in a stratified manner from across Canada as part of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Assessment (IEA) study (Connelly, Crocker & Kass, 1984). Each student was asked to respond to a statement concerning a STS topic (1) by indicating whether he or she agreed with the statement, disagreed, or could not tell; PLUS (2) by writing a paragraph explaining the reasons for the choice. The statements came from VOSTS Form CDN-2 comprising 46 statements based on 16 major topics found in the epistemology and sociology of science literature. Each The first article (Aikenhead, Fleming & Ryan, 1987) detailed the research methods of the study, described the construction of VOSTS, discussed problems of instrument validity in the area of monitoring student beliefs, and suggested fruitful directions for further research. Three ensuing articles document and discuss the various viewpoints held by Canadian high school students about the interaction among science, technology and society (the present article), the characteristics and limitations of scientific knowledge (Aikenhead, 1987), and the characteristics of scientists (Ryan, 1987).