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Effects of socioscientific issues-based teaching on attitudes: Students' resources as moderator
The Journal of Educational Research
Abstract
Engagement with socioscientific issues (SSI) is seen as an important citizenship goal of SSI-based science education. In this experimental study, Dutch students (age 8 to 13) participated in lesson series in which they learned about and discussed SSI, such as issues related to the textile industry and wastewater. Attitudes toward SSI indicating engagement were measured among relatively large experimental (n = 236) and control (n = 192) groups prior to and after the intervention. Multilevel analyses showed a positive effect of SSI-based teaching on collective efficacy and no effects on the other seven attitude components. Furthermore, we investigated whether the effects depended on students’ SSI-related resources. Students’ profiles for use of sources of knowledge (USK) moderated the effect of condition on self-efficacy and—depending on analysis type—on personal relevance, positive feelings, and collective efficacy. The positive impact occurred mainly for students with low USK. We discuss implications thereof for SSI education.
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Effective teaching for democracy requires an understanding of the teaching methods and educational characteristics that are effective in interventions. In order to address this requirement,
we conducted a systematic literature review. We used an extensive search syntax and snowballing method that allowed us to find n = 2093 unique publications. After a screening process, we have included 54 interventions in 51 different quantitative effect studies written between 2010 and 2020. We categorized these interventions into five types of teaching methods: instruction, small-group work, assignments, projects, and democratic decision-making. We analyzed what the educational characteristics (i.e., subject matter, classroom interaction, classroom management) of these interventions were and for which democratic competences (i.e., knowledge, attitude, skill, behavior) they were effective. Our results show that teaching methods have differential effects on democratic competences. We also discuss the robustness of these results. Our study shows that there is still much to be gained in terms of research designs, the conceptualization of democratic competences, and the description of teaching methods.
The goal of all reform documents in science education is to target scientific literacy. Toward that end, having students understand the nature of science (NOS) is a critical component. As it turns out, the development of NOS conceptions is a cognitive learning outcome. Therefore, an explicit approach needs to be promoted and emphasized in the classrooms to address students’ conceptions of NOS. At the same time, the development of NOS conceptions among learners is context dependent. Consequently, different learning frameworks might influence the NOS conceptions of learners in various ways. There are several frameworks to contextualize NOS instruction in relation to three different contexts: history of science (HOS), scientific inquiry (SI), and socioscientific issues (SSI). As such, the aim of this study was to review studies on NOS instruction, categorize the reviewed studies into different contexts, and investigate the effect of these different contexts on the improvement in students’ conceptions of NOS. As a conclusion, implications for future research and classroom practice related to the explicit teaching about NOS in these contexts were discussed.
Usta, S; Uçak, E. (2022). The effect of visual media-supported classroom discussion on 8th grade students' attitudes towards socio-scientific issues, towards research and inquiry and on their decision making. Abstract The current study aimed to investigate the effect of visual media-supported classroom discussions on 8 th grade students' attitudes towards socio-scientific issues, towards research and inquiry and on their decision making. The study was conducted in a secondary school located in a city in the western part of Turkey in the fall term of the 2021-2022 school year. The study group is comprised of a total of 51 eighth grade students; 25 in the experimental group and 26 in the control group. The study employed the quasi-experimental pretest-posttest control group design, one of the quantitative research methods. The study lasted for 9 weeks. As the data collection tools, the adolescent decision-making scale, the scale of attitudes towards socio-scientific issues and the scale of attitudes towards research and inquiry were used in the study. Classroom activities defined in the science curriculum were conducted with the control group students while visual media-supported classroom discussions in addition to the activities defined in the curriculum were conducted with the experimental group students. At the end of the study, a statistically significant difference was found between the pretest and posttest mean scores of the experimental and control group students taken from the scales of attitudes towards socio-scientific issues and research and inquiry in favour of the experimental group students. While no significant difference was observed between the pretest and posttest mean scores of the control group students taken from the adolescent decision-making scale, a statistically significant difference was observed between the pretest and posttest mean scores of the experimental group students taken from the adolescent decision-making scale's sub-scales of self-esteem, vigilance and cope out whereas no significant difference was observed between the pretest and posttest mean scores taken from the sub-scales of complacency and panic.
The design and development of modules in cultivating entrepreneurial science thinking (EST) in STEM education at the primary school level is still limited. Thus, this research was conducted to i) establish the validity, reliability and feasibility of the module based on the socioscientific issues approach aided by the thinking wheel map (SIA-TM), and ii) evaluate its effects on the EST among fifth graders in STEM education. Data were collected via respondents’ feedback in the 5-point Likert scale questionnaire and an EST test. The first phase of the module evaluation was conducted by five expert evaluators and among 30 fifth graders. The second phase was evaluation through the quasi-experimental research design with the pre-test post-test control group design. A total of 60 fifth graders were gathered into two groups which were the SIA-TM group (n=30) and control group (n=30). The results of the SIA-TM module evaluation shows that the validity value was good, and the alpha Cronbach reliability was between .74 and .89 with the overall value of .92. The students showed a high level of acceptance (m=4.53) towards the activities in the SIA-TM Module. Feedback from the students showed the module’s feasibility and acceptance by students. The results of the t-test prove a significantly positive effect on the five constructs in EST. Therefore, these results establish that the SIA-TM teaching and learning module is valid, reliable, feasible and effective in increasing fifth graders’ EST in STEM education. Keywords: entrepreneurial science thinking, socioscientific issues approach, STEM education, thinking wheel map
Currently, a growing number of learning institutions at all educational levels are including problem-based learning (PBL) in their curricula. PBL scenarios often utilise technology and socio-scientific Issues (SSI), which enables the simultaneous learning of content and creative thinking and working skills needed in generating new knowledge for the future. In this sense, using SSI and technological tools in PBL learning environments can be viewed as a starting point for acquiring and integrating new knowledge. However, there is no comprehensive knowledge regarding the possibilities of this approach. The objective of this systematic review is to produce this knowledge via the PRISMA method. The strategy is used to explore the effects of the described approach through implementations conducted at secondary and undergraduate levels. The data consisted of 33 research articles that were categorised via qualitative content analysis. According to the results, PBL scenarios exploit mainly local SSIs that link scientific knowledge with a meaningful context for students. Technology is principally used in offering technical support for teaching tasks. Lastly, these results are discussed from the technological pedagogical science knowledge (TPASK) framework perspective, which proposes guidelines for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).
In het TechYourfuture project ‘Samen werken aan Bèta Burgerschap’, dat plaats vond in de periode maart 2015 - maart 2020, gaven de onderzoekers samen met scholen en bedrijven concreet invulling aan burgerschapsonderwijs. De maatschappij en maatschappelijke vraagstukken worden steeds complexer. Politieke, technologische, economische, sociaal-culturele of ecologische aspecten van een vraagstuk zijn met elkaar verweven. Daarnaast spelen ook globale en lokale dimensies een rol. Er zijn alleen hierdoor al meerdere antwoorden mogelijk op een vraagstuk. Gedurende het project hebben basisschoolleerlingen (wereldwijde) maatschappelijk-technologische vraagstukken geanalyseerd, bediscussieerd en daar oplossingen voor bedacht. Leraren hebben in het project geleerd bèta burgerschap activiteiten te ontwikkelen, uit te voeren en te evalueren.
In de kern gaat het er in Bèta Burgerschap om dat leerlingen door groepsgewijs vraagstukken op te lossen burgerschapscompetenties ontwikkelen. Het gaat hier om drie hoofdcompetenties:
(1.) Collectieve argumentatievaardigheden,
(2.) Attituden ten opzichte van maatschappelijk technologische vraagstukken en,
(3.) Bèta- en techniekkennis.
In het onderzoek ‘Samen werken aan Bèta Burgerschap’ is gekeken naar de ontwikkeling van deze drie hoofdcompetenties bij leerlingen die deelnamen aan Bèta Burgerschap activiteiten, alsook naar de effecten van de training en video-coaching die de leerkrachten in het project gevolgd hebben. De resultaten hiervan zijn in het onderzoeksrapport te lezen.
Het onderzoek laat zien dat Bèta Burgerschap een aanpak is die leerlingen mogelijkheden biedt om te oefenen met groepsgewijs probleem oplossen als burgerschapscompetentie. Door op school met maatschappelijk-technologische vraagstukken aan de slag te gaan, doen leerlingen meer kennis op over deze vraagstukken en worden zij zich meer bewust van wat er in de wereld speelt en van hoe zij zich verhouden tot deze vraagstukken. Om met Bèta Burgerschap aan de slag te gaan en het netwerk denken en de discussie doeltreffend te begeleiden, blijkt het professionaliseringstraject van toegevoegde waarde te zijn.
Simple Summary
Large carnivores distributed throughout Europe have interactions with people because their habitats often collide with human settlements. Since human behavior can significantly influence the conservation of these species, knowledge of certain behaviors and factors of influence are crucial. The present study included 534 students from lower and upper secondary schools. In this article, students’ attitudes to and knowledge of brown bears and the indirect effect of teaching are examined. Factors such as gender and seeing a bear in nature were found to influence the students’ attitudes and knowledge significantly, implying that they should be considered in any future educational actions. Other factors like residence, owning a dog, having a hunter in the family, breeding livestock and visiting a zoo had a smaller effect on the students’ attitudes and knowledge in general. The results thus indicate that greater knowledge was correlated with proconservation attitudes and reduced fear among the students.
Abstract
The expansion of large carnivores across Europe is posing a challenge to their conservation. Since success with conservation may depend significantly on human behavior, knowledge of certain behaviors’ emergence and all the factors that affect them are crucial. The present study included 534 students who were divided into a comparison group (n = 317) and a treatment group (n = 217) consisting of 309 lower secondary (LS, MAge = 12.2, SD = 0.94) and 225 upper secondary (US, n = 225, MAge = 16.5, SD = 0.99) school students. We assessed their attitudes to and knowledge of brown bears. An indirect effect of the workshops (instructions) is also described. Sociodemographic factors, such as gender and seeing a bear in nature, significantly influenced the students’ attitudes and knowledge. Residence, owning a dog, having a hunter in the family, breeding livestock and visiting a zoo had a smaller effect on the students’ attitudes and knowledge. The results thus show that greater knowledge is correlated with proconservation attitudes, and partly with reduction of fear. Therefore, future conservation and management should employ strong communication, especially education activities based on direct experiences and carefully designed information regarding species and socio-scientific issues.
This review study synthesises 28 empirical research articles emphasising the learning of morality aspects in the context of addressing socioscientific issues (SSI) in secondary science education. The key interrelated questions we seek to address in this study are how morality is conceptualised in the science classroom in the light of emerging sustainability issues and how it can be developed. We used the Four Component Model of Morality to create a knowledge base for how morality has been conceptualised in the literature on secondary science education and how it can be developed. The findings of this review study show that not all studies have used concrete, explicit conceptualisations of morality and that the role of sense of place and the situatedness of morality have often been neglected. It also emerged that studies focusing on students’ moral character and action-taking were underrepresented. We recommend that further research be carried out on the interrelationships between moral character and enacted moral reasoning. The review also reveals a gap between morality research and teaching. Based on the outcomes of this review, we propose a set of recommendations aimed at guiding and encouraging students’ morality within secondary science education.
In STEM learning focused on science literacy, socioscientific issues instruction is often proposed as a way to bolster students’ civic engagement, however few studies in science education have explicitly examined this connection. We define civic engagement as the work of influencing legitimately public matters using means within the existing political structure. In this work we investigate students’ feelings of self-efficacy for this type of civic engagement in the context of four socioscientific issues (prairie dog conservation, food insecurity, biofuels and water conservation). This study was in the context of a large enrollment introductory science college course, where students used a structured decision-making process to examine alternative policy solutions to complex socioscientific issues. We qualitatively examined students’ response about their perception of the importance of the issue, their self-efficacy in exploring actions they could take to impact the issue, and the effectiveness of those actions. We found that students’ ideas about impact and effectiveness varied across the four different issues contexts due to students’ sense of the issues’ importance and scale. Generally, students’ ideas about actions they could take to impact the issue were narrow and rarely included political actions like voting. We also found post instruction increases in students’ civic engagement attitudes and skills related to social justice, interpersonal and problem-solving skills and political awareness. Finally, we suggest that socioscientific instruction must have an explicit connection to policy-level decisions and reveal how individual actions can influence the societal system. Our course using a structured decision-making process in the context of socioscientific issues is one model to help students make these connections.
Global warming and climate change are serious issues facing humanity at present and education needs to focus on including informed-decision in classroom practices. The conceptual framework used in this study has provided interconnections that influence beliefs and understandings in providing a knowledge base for making “informed-decision” among high school students. This study was conducted in three year 9 classes in two high schools in the UK and among 65 students. An inquiry intervention model was developed using the 5E instructional model (Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate) to identify beliefs and understanding and to strengthen students’ knowledge base. This study used a design-based research setting and utilised a mixed methodology. The Wilcoxon signed-rank tests were computed to examine the pre-post-difference among questionnaire items, and structural equation modelling (SEM) was utilised to explore the relationship between belief, understanding, and intention. Data analysis of the intervention revealed that students developed a strong understanding of the causes and effects of global warming. There is evidence that students used that knowledge to “inform-decision” in relation to global warming and climate change. Promoting informed decision-making through science teaching can encourage responsible action in the future. The real gap identified in this study is that the regular school curriculum does not engage socio-scientific issues in the real world and has no opportunity to organise an inquiry-based instructional sequence for informed decision-making.
The focus of this paper is on the Science-Technology-Society (STS) initiative, developed in the 1980s, subsequently expanded to STSE to acknowledge environmental concerns and later expanded further to include the provision of opportunities for students to confront socioscientific issues (SSI), often of a controversial and certainly of a topical nature.
The article focuses on the key issues that need to be addressed in building such a curriculum, including selection of appropriate SSI, ensuring access to the necessary scientific knowledge, developing the necessary media literacy to access other material relevant to the issues, fostering the political awareness needed for critical interpretation of issues and building the ethical understanding needed to address the complex issues raised by controversial SSI. Teachers introducing SSI into the curriculum need to be sensitive to the profound emotions that can be generated among students encountering controversial issues for the first time. An understanding of emotional intelligence , emotional literacy and emotional competence is essential, and building students’ capacities in these matters is crucial to helping them deal with potentially stressful and disconcerting learning situations that will inevitably arise.
I argue that a curriculum to build students’ capacity for sociopolitical action on SSI can be developed through a 4-stage model: (1) appreciating the societal and environmental impact of scientific and technological change, and recognizing that science and technology are, to some extent, culturally determined; (2) recognizing that decisions about scientific and technological development are taken in pursuit of particular interests, that benefits accruing to some may be at the expense of others and that developments in science and technology are inextricably linked with the distribution of wealth and power; (3) addressing controversy, clarifying values, resolving ethical dilemmas, formulating and developing one’s own views and justifying them through discussion and argument; and (4) preparing for and taking action on socioscientific and environmental issues. Stage 4 is further divided into learning about action, learning through action and learning from action. Learning about action focuses on learning the skills and strategies of sociopolitical action through movies, biographies and autobiographies, case studies and simulations, role-play and dramatic reconstructions. Learning through action comprises direct involvement in action-oriented projects outside the classroom that are likely to have tangible outcomes and consequences.
The prime purpose of this action-oriented approach to addressing complex and controversial SSI is to enable young citizens to look critically at the society we have and the values that sustain it, and to ask what can and should be changed in order to achieve a more socially just democracy and bring about more environmentally sustainable lifestyles. It almost goes without saying that teachers who introduce SSI into the curriculum need to be sensitive to the need to assist students in dealing with potentially stressful and disconcerting learning situations. It is here that notions of emotional intelligence , emotional literacy and emotional competence can be helpful. Furthermore, there are many reasons why the translation of this kind of curriculum rhetoric into practical action in real classrooms will be extraordinarily complex and difficult. Such a radical change in the nature of the school curriculum puts a whole raft of new demands on teachers; it challenges many of the assumptions on which schooling is traditionally based; it is predicated on a commitment to bringing about extensive and wide-ranging social change at local, regional, national and international levels.
This chapter demonstrates the impact of an animal cloning socioscientific issues instructional unit on a group of middle school students' abilities to use their ecological worldview, social and moral compassion, and sense of socioscientific accountability to determine the permissibility of animal cloning. Seventy-seven 7th grade students at a public middle school in the Southeastern region of the United States participated in this investigation. Results from a non-parametric two-tailed Wilcoxon test indicated the students' social and moral compassion (Z = -2.505, p = .012) and socioscientific accountability scores (Z = -2.381, p = .017). In contrast, the results did not demonstrate a statistically significant difference between students' pre and post ecological worldview (Z = -1.185, p = .236). Qualitative analyses of the data revealed several interesting trends and themes discussed in the chapter. The findings from this investigation support the use of SSI as key pedagogical strategies in promoting character and values for global citizens among middle school students.
This paper presents the results of a large-scale study to validate a questionnaire that measures pupils’ attitudes towards socioscientific issues (the PASSI questionnaire). We define socioscientific issues (SSI) as those topics that are about complex societal and technological developments that may induce ethical dilemmas. In this study, the term attitudes describes a combination of attitude components that relate to pupils’ engagement with SSI. Based on a literature review within social and educational psychology and sociology, on topics such as attitude development, scientific citizenship, social or civic engagement, and SSI teaching and learning, we developed a framework that describes several underlying components of pupils’ attitudes towards SSI. These components were translated into nine scales that comprise the PASSI. Results of a validation study among 1370 pupils (age 8–15), using exploratory factor analyses on subsample 1 and subsequently confirmatory factor analyses on subsample 2, indicated an eight-factor structure that showed good convergent and discriminant validity. Furthermore, the PASSI instrument showed adequate measurement invariance for boys and girls, pupils in primary and secondary education, and for pupils at different secondary educational tracks. The results are discussed in terms of directions for future research to further investigate the validity of the PASSI questionnaire. To conclude, the PASSI questionnaire validly measures eight attitudes towards SSI and could serve as a tool that raises awareness of pupils’ engagement with SSI. It can be used by researchers and teachers as a diagnostic instrument, to compare groups, and to study effects of SSI education.
Socioscientific issues (SSI) have been found to improve scientific literacy skills among K-12 students. Elementary preservice teachers (PSTs), however, are reluctant to implement SSI due to a lack of confidence with content knowledge concerning SSI and pedagogical abilities. Existing research focuses on helping PSTs overcome these concerns through microteaching, adapting existing curricula, and experiencing SSI through methods courses. While it has been noted that formal preparation is required for PSTs to feel confident in their abilities to facilitate SSI, little has been done to prepare elementary PSTs to facilitate SSI during field experiences. PST's concerns regarding science instruction with SSI are speculative since existing empirical evidence has been collected outside the context of the classroom. In this qualitative multicase study, we explored the challenges identified by three elementary PSTs as they facilitated SSI in the classroom. Community of practice (CoP) meetings provided formal training to prepare these participants' PSTs to facilitate SSI. Recordings of the CoP meetings, lesson plans, observations, and interviews served as data sources. Analysis revealed the following challenges as themes: student concerns, time constraints, and obstacles implementing the SSI framework. We present findings associated with each of these themes and identify implications for preparing elementary PSTs for SSI instruction.
Research on the Socioscientific Issues (SSI) framework provides compelling evidence
of its ability to provide contextualized science learning as preparation for informed
citizenship. However, few SSI studies provide insight as to whether the pedagogical
demands of SSI warrant modification or refinement when implemented with young
children. Through this exploratory teacher research study, SSI units were developed
and implemented in the teacher-researcher’s first, second, and fourth grade science
classrooms over a one-year period. Results suggest that while SSI provided a
critical real-world context for science learning and student discourse, several
developmentally-influenced challenges were evident including students’ difficulties in
shifting from emotional to cognitive bases of argumentation, unintended activation of
student fears, confusion between real and imaginary scenarios, and uneven emotion
regulation. Findings and recommendations provide a foundation for future research
on curricular and pedagogical supports that can facilitate successful elementary
SSI implementation.
Learning science in the context of socio-scientific issues (SSI) is widely advocated for achieving the goal of scientific literacy that values using science in daily lives. While prior research suggests that SSI-based learning can promote students’ disciplinary knowledge and practices, less is known about students’ perceptions of SSI-based learning and how to support students in considering the epistemic aspects of SSI learning. In this study, we seek to address the research gap by examining students’ perceptions of their learning and how they appropriate the epistemic tools for systems thinking in an issue-based unit on the regulation of e-cigarettes. We used semi-structured interviews from 33 students in a midwestern U.S. high school as our primary data. The results suggest that students in general held positive attitudes towards SSI-based learning experiences and found SSI work to be 1) relevant, 2) interesting, 3) promoting agency, and 4) beneficial for their science learning. Also, we found that students differed in how they appropriated the epistemic tools for systems thinking ranging from lack of appropriation, to appropriating surface features, and to appropriating epistemic purposes. We conclude the paper by discussing how engaging students in meaningful learning activities may support students’ productive engagement in SSI learning.
The purpose of the present study is to examine the effects of science education based on socioscientific issues (SSI) through the constructivist approach to attitudes towardas SSI, scientific reasoning and reflective thinking skills of 7th grade students. In the study, a pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design with control group was used. The study was conducted by participation of 51 7th grade students in the academic year of 2016-2017. Sample of the study is determined through selection of convenient sample. In the process of application, both experimental and control groups’ lessons were planned according to 5E learning model in the manner that including
many learning-teaching method and techniques based on constructivist approach. On the other hand, Pollution of River Ergene, Utilization of Food Additive and Lake Gala National Park issues in the context of SSI were entegrated into chemical industry biodiversity topics for the experimental group, whereas lessons were processed
without underlining SSI in the control group. The Attitudes towards Socioscientific Issues Scale (ATSIS), Lawson’s Classroom Test of Scientific Reasoning (CTRS), and reflective thinking scale (RTS) were employed to collect data. Statistical analysis of data was performed by using descriptive and inferential statistical analysis techniques through SPSS program. After determining that the necessary assumptions were met for the ANCOVA analysis, ANCOVA technique was utilized. According to ANCOVA results, a significant difference was found between the ATSIS posttest scores of the experimental and control groups in favour of the experimental group. However, there was no statistically significant difference between CTRS and RTS posttest scores of the experimental and control groups.
Keywords: Attitude towards socioscientific issues, reflective thinking, scientific reasoning, socioscientific issues.
The study's purpose was to evaluate the quality of argumentations presented by students in relation to local socioscientific issues (SSIs). The participants, 36 seventh‐grade students from state schools, were divided into three learning groups—outdoor group, newspaper group, and presentation group. Five local environment‐related SSIs were selected: an artificial lake, chicken coops, leather tanneries, base stations, and hydroelectric power plants (HPPs). Different data sources were provided to each group pertaining to their SSIs. The outdoor group learned through field trips, the newspaper group acquired information through newspapers, and the presentation group learned via presentations. Each group gathered data from their unique learning sources, which then formed the basis of their arguments. After a pilot study, each group experienced the same argumentation practice within smaller groups. The recorded discussions were transcribed, and the qualities of 582 argumentation episodes chronicled over a period of 10 weeks were evaluated using an analytical assessment tool. It emerged that the quality of argumentations of each group varied by the data sources and the contexts of the SSIs. While the newspaper group displayed the best performance in 4 out of 5 issues, the outdoor group had the lowest performance overall. In terms of generating high‐quality argumentations about the artificial lake, chicken coops, and base stations, the newspaper group ranked top, followed by the presentation group, and then the outdoor group. HPPs proved to be the most challenging context for students across all groups. The study sums up with discussions of the differences between the quality of argumentations of the various groups and the implications of the study's conclusions.
The socioscientific issues framework has proven to have a significant impact over the last two decades on many areas related to the development of functional scientific literacy in students. In this article, we summarize and synthesize recent trends in socioscientific issues research that impact both disciplinary and interdisciplinary science education research. These trends represent science-in-context investigations that we propose are advanced by three broad and interrelated areas of research including: 1) Socioscientific Issues and the Central Role of Socioscientific Reasoning; 2) Socioscientific Issues and the Primacy of Socioscientific Perspective Taking; and, 3) Socioscientific Issues and the Importance of Informal and Place-Based Contexts. We discuss the most recent research in those areas and explore the educational significance these new trends.
Both direct and indirect influences have been assumed to impact the transmission of political orientations within families. A lower socioeconomic status is related to lower intended political participation of adolescents. Within this context, schools play a crucial role in political socialisation, as citizenship education is assumed to either equalise or maintain these social disparities. We analyse a sub-dataset of the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study 2016 which includes 14-year-old students in four European countries: Belgium (Flanders), Denmark, Germany (North Rhine-Westphalia) and the Netherlands. Multi-level regression analyses reveal that formal citizenship education compensates the relationship between students’ socioeconomic status and intended electoral participation in Denmark, Germany (NRW) and the Netherlands, but not in Belgium (FL). Further, the composition of school classes is related to the perception of an open classroom climate in each of the four countries and to participation in civic activities at school in three countries.
The premise of our study is that emotional competence (EC) serves as a foundational contributor to the achievement of science education goals in the context of socioscientific issues (SSIs). EC is a set of abilities necessary to accomplish adaptive goals in emotionally arousing situations. We contend that the development of EC is conducive to learning and character development in the SSI context. Therefore, we set out to develop and implement an EC intervention SSI program (called EC-SSI) and to verify the program’s effect on students’ EC, and “character and values.” We developed a nine-lesson program using two SSI scenarios: the Coltan mining problem and a designer baby dilemma. We collected data using questionnaires and student worksheets from 26 tenth graders and applied a mixed method approach to data gathering and analysis. We found that the program significantly improved students’ EC and “character and values.” From these results, we conclude that instructional strategies to improve students’ EC can be applied in SSI instruction and can positively affect student’s empathy and emotion regulation. We suggested that SSIs can provide an appropriate context for the improvement of students’ EC in science education and educators consider EC training integration at appropriate stages of science learning. We also recommend follow-up research to examine how students’ EC development impacts their SSI decision-making.
The current study aimed to make students discover the multidimensional structure of Socio-scientific Issues (SSI) using the SEE-STEP model. Nine-step module has been designed to help students' discover the aspects of the SSI in the implementation process of the research. This research was based on qualitative methodology in determining the study group, the SSI in question, data collection tool, application process, and data analysis. The sample of research consisted of 24 (13 girls and 11 boys) seventh-grade middle school students. The current research findings indicate that during the decision-making process, the students mostly refer to decisive values, followed by decisive knowledge and personal experience, respectively. Also, it has been found that students mostly base their hard core (HC) reasons and (positive heuristic's) PH’s generally on the aspects of economy and environment, and that they made up no HC reasons in the aspects of technology and ethics. Based on these findings, it is seen that most of the students who participated in the activity liked the nine-step module.
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.
The study on primary teachers’ attitudes towards science and technology has received considerable research attention over the last decades. However, if one looks at the extant literature in this domain, a major problem that becomes apparent is the lack of consistency in the conceptualization of what is meant by teacher attitudes. Attitude is a complex and multidimensional construct and a clear definition and thorough theoretical understanding are essential for research in this area. The present chapter is intended to shed more light on this construct and to present the results of a focus group study amongst pre- and in-service primary teachers that investigated both their personal attitudes towards science and technology and their attitudes towards teaching science and technology at primary school level.
Engagement is one of the most widely misused and overgeneralized constructs found in the educational, learning, instructional, and psychological sciences. The articles in this special issue represent a wide range of traditions and highlight several key conceptual, theoretical, methodological, and analytical issues related to defining and measuring engagement. All the approaches exemplified by the contributors show different ways of conceptualizing and measuring engagement and demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of each method to significantly augment our current understanding of engagement. Despite the numerous issues raised by the authors of this special issue and in my commentary, I argue that focusing on process data will lead to advances in models, theory, methods, analytical techniques, and ultimately instructional recommendations for learning contexts that effectively engage students.
Research dealing with various aspects of* the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1985,
1987) is reviewed, and some unresolved issues are discussed. In broad terms, the theory is
found to be well supported by empirical evidence. Intentions to perform behaviors of different
kinds can be predicted with high accuracy from attitudes toward the behavior, subjective
norms, and perceived behavioral control; and these intentions, together with perceptions of
behavioral control, account for considerable variance in actual behavior. Attitudes, subjective
norms, and perceived behavioral control are shown to be related to appropriate sets of salient
behavioral, normative, and control beliefs about the behavior, but the exact nature of these
relations is still uncertain. Expectancy value formulations are found to be only partly
successful in dealing with these relations. Optimal rescaling of expectancy and value
measures is offered as a means of dealing with measurement limitations. Finally, inclusion of
past behavior in the prediction equation is shown to provide a means of testing the theory*s
sufficiency, another issue that remains unresolved. The limited available evidence concerning
this question shows that the theory is predicting behavior quite well in comparison to the
ceiling imposed by behavioral reliability.
Attention to the attitudes of preservice and inservice primary teachers toward science is of fundamental importance to research on primary science education. However, progress in this field of research has been slow due to the poor definition and conceptual-ization of the construct of primary teachers' attitude toward science. This poor theoretical background has led to the use of a multitude of different concepts and measurement in-struments. The main goal of this article is to present a new and comprehensive theoretical framework for primary teachers' attitudes toward science. The framework is based on an extensive review of previously used concept definitions of the construct. It is argued that this framework should serve as a necessary conceptual basis for future research and inter-ventions in this domain, as well as for the construction of valid measurement instruments.
This article evaluated the impact of a four-lesson science module on the attitudes of secondary school students. This science module (on cancer and modern biotechnology) utilises several design principles, related to a social constructivist perspective on learning. The expectation was that the module would help students become more articulate in this particular field. In a quasi-experimental design (experimental-, control groups, and pre- and post-tests), secondary school students' attitudes (N = 365) towards modern biotechnology were measured by a questionnaire. Data were analysed using Chi-square tests. Significant differences were obtained between the control and experimental conditions. Results showed that the science module had a significant effect on attitudes, although predominantly towards a more supportive and not towards a more critical stance. It is discussed that offering a science module of this kind can indeed encourage students to become more aware of modern biotechnology, although promoting a more critical attitude towards modern biotechnology should receive more attention.
In the present STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)-driven society, socioscientific issues (SSI) have become a focus globally and SSI research has grown into an important area of study in science education. Since students attending the social and science programs have a different focus in their studies and research has shown that students attending a science program are less familiar with argumentation practice, we make a comparison of the supporting reasons social science and science majors use in arguing different SSI with the goal to provide important information for pedagogical decisions about curriculum and instruction. As an analytical framework, a model termed SEE-SEP covering three aspects (of knowledge, value, and experiences) and six subject areas (of sociology/culture, economy, environment/ecology, science, ethics/morality, and policy) was adopted to analyze students' justifications. A total of 208 upper secondary students (105 social science majors and 103 science majors) from Sweden were invited to justify and expound their arguments on four SSI including global warming, genetically modified organisms (GMO), nuclear power, and consumer consumption. The results showed that the social science majors generated more justifications than the science majors, the aspect of value was used most in students' argumentation regardless of students' discipline background, and justifications from the subject area of science were most often presented in nuclear power and GMO issues. We conclude by arguing that engaging teachers from different subjects to cooperate when teaching argumentation on SSI could be of great value and provide students from both social science and science programs the best possible conditions in which to develop argumentation skills.
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This study aimed to develop and validate the Attitudes towards Socioscientific Issues Scale (ATSIS) for undergraduate students. In the first step, data were collected from 160 undergraduate students from the departments of science education and elementary education to provide validity of the scale. In light of the results of an exploratory factor analysis, three dimensions emerged: interest and usefulness of socioscientific issues (SSI); liking of SSI; and anxiety towards SSI. In the second step, data were collected from 216 undergraduate students from the departments of science education, elementary education and social sciences to confirm the factorial structure of the 30-item ATSIS. A confirmatory factor analysis supported the three-dimensional structure of ATSIS. Another important characteristic of an instrument is reliability of the instrument, so Cronbach α coefficients for each dimension were computed. For the dimensions of ATSIS, the Cronbach α coefficients ranged from 0.70 to 0.90. This study has provided a new scale to the field that is both a reliable and valid instrument. The results also pointed out that the ATSIS distinguished between major and non-major students, in a Turkish setting, with better attitudes towards SSI scores for majors. The author of the present study recommends that the field continues examining attitudes of undergraduate students towards SSI to verify the results of the present study and to produce new evidence about their attitudes.
Drawing upon recent research, this article reviews the theory underlying the use of socioscientific issues (SSI) in science
education. We begin with a definition and rationale for SSI and note the importance of SSI for advancing functional scientific
literacy. We then examine the various roles of context, teachers, and students in SSI lessons as well as the importance of
classroom discourse, including sociomoral discourse, argumentation, discussion, and debate. Finally, we discuss how SSI units,
which encourage evidence-based decisionmaking and compromise, can improve critical thinking, contribute to character education,
and provide an interesting context for teaching required science content.
The current study is about students' engagement with socioscientific issues (SSI). We explored the use of sources of knowledge about SSI and attitudes toward SSI among a sample of 1676 Dutch 8- to 16-year-old students. First, we developed a questionnaire that measured students' use of four sources of knowledge about SSI: Social Resources (online media use and talking with parents and friends), In-Class Resources (in-class talk and in-class offline media use), Visit Resources (visiting the zoo or a science museum with parents or school), and Offline Media Resources (engaging with issues or the news via books, magazines, newspapers, or TV). Second, we performed a latent profile analysis to explore students' patterns of use of these sources. This resulted in five profiles: Social Visitors (5.9%), Offline Media Consumers (10.6%), Media Discussers (14.3%), In-Class Users (21.0%), and Non-Users (48.3%). Third, we related these profiles to students' attitudes toward SSI, as measured with the Pupils' Attitudes toward Socioscientific Issues (PASSI) questionnaire. In line with the sources of knowledge profiles, the Non-Users felt and thought most negatively about engagement with SSI, while the Media Discussers showed the most positive attitudes. We believe that our exploration of the profiles adds to the discourse about students' socioscientific capital. Moreover, this study informs teachers about the resources that students may bring into the learning environment and their decision-making about SSI. The study concludes with practical suggestions about stimulating the use of sources of knowledge for certain groups of students and fostering positive attitudes toward engagement with SSI.
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In this position paper, we introduce the concept of socioscientific capital (SSC) to denote students' resources that unequivocally play a part when students learn about and make decisions regarding socioscientific issues (SSIs). Students use a variety of resources when they engage with SSI. Our conceptualization of SSC expands on current conceptualizations to refer to resources related to both the scientific and the non-scientific aspects of SSI, including internal resources (personal experiences, values, attitudes, beliefs, knowledge, and skills), external resources (family, friends, communities, and media), and meta-level resources (dominant frames and cultures). Aiming to strengthen SSI education, we argue for taking into account how students' resources impact their SSI-related learning and decision-making. To this end, insight into students' SSC is needed and is imperative for teachers. By bringing together literature about SSI education and literature about students' resources, we provide a conceptual view on students' SSC and describe implications for SSI education.
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Design‐based learning (DBL) offers opportunities to support students' content understanding. Previous DBL studies reported different effect sizes by using the data from one participant group. The goal of this study was to conduct a meta‐analysis that would give a comprehensive picture of how DBL is connected to student achievement in different disciplines. In addition, we explored the moderators influencing achievement in DBL for K‐12 education. After investigating content‐related gains in our meta‐analysis on 37 individual articles with 52 effect sizes, we found that DBL had a positive and large effect (g¯ = 0.602) on achievement in K‐12 education, and the effect size for science (g¯ = 0.703) was higher than mathematics (g¯ = 0.418) education. When considering the strong emphasis on science education in different DBL related frameworks and STEM (science, engineering, technology, and mathematics) education studies, this cumulative understanding could play an important role in the difference between science and mathematics. Studies that had control groups in the same school (g¯ = 0.703) had statistically significantly higher effect sizes compared to studies that included control groups from different schools (g¯ = 0.447). Studies with random assignment (g¯ = 0.258) had statistically significantly smaller effect sizes compared to studies with non‐random assignment (g¯ = 0.623). In addition, the effect of DBL on achievement showed statistically significant differences among different countries. The remaining moderators (school level, content support, measurement type, and experimental design) did not show statistically significant differences in terms of the effect of DBL on student achievement. Our review presents evidence that participating in DBL activities supports student achievement after the intervention, but how students transfer their content gains in other situations needs convincing evidence. To overcome this challenge, future studies can prioritize how to support achievement in state mandated tests to understand DBL's effect on students' content gains in different learning situations.
We advance the understanding of how student emotions relate to their learning of socioscientific issues (SSI). Studies have tended to examine how students' positive and negative emotions about an issue contribute to their learning. However, this approach overlooks the fact that students may have different emotions about different objects (i.e., stakeholders, phenomena, the status quo, and the future) within an issue. In this study, we examined students' patterns of emotion objects with respect to the extent of their conceptual change from a reductionist view to a systems view of obesity. Using a multiple case study design, we tracked the emotion objects of four purposefully selected university students, who demonstrated either significant change or minimal change in their view of obesity. Data were collected over a 12‐week general education course on obesity and 6 months after the course, and included weekly reflective journals and delayed postcourse interviews. We found that students with different extents of conceptual change had distinguishable sets of emotion objects. For example, the emotion objects of students with significant conceptual change included obese people and the food industry. Furthermore, their emotions were more often moral in nature. These findings suggest that moral emotions are an integral part of SSI learning. We make two contributions to the literature. First, we identify the need to attend to and specify emotion objects as key variables in future research on emotions. In practice, teachers should consider strategies that help students attend to the emotion objects that matter for SSI learning. Second, we identify stakeholders as key emotion objects in SSI learning. The expression of moral emotions about stakeholders coincided with conceptual change to a systems view. This implies that future research and the practice of SSI learning should pay attention to students' moral emotions about stakeholders.
We examined the effects of applying the instructional method of constructive controversy in an animal welfare unit, on middle-school students’ knowledge and attitudes relating to the treatment and welfare of animals. Accordingly, we developed and implemented a four-stage instructional model centring on constructive controversy in a class of 27 eighth-grade students aged between 13 and 14 years old at a Beijing school. Our study entailed a pre-test and post-test study design, with data collected through questionnaires completed manually by the students and through semi-structured interviews. We assessed students’ understandings of and attitudes towards animal welfare before and after the implementation of the instructional unit. The results of our study clearly indicated that the students’ understandings of animal welfare increased, and they displayed more positive attitudes towards the treatment of animals and animal welfare issues after they had completed the unit. Moreover, during the semi-structured interviews, they provided positive evaluations of the activities designed for this unit.
This paper explores the potential of civic science education (CSE), which includes experiences that have been intentionally designed to foster or enhance individuals’ interactions with and/or engagement in science‐related public matters. To begin, we provide a theoretically‐grounded definition of CSE, including three sub‐categories: foundational, exploratory, and purposefully active. We then explore the scholarly arguments for why enacting CSE could help to support students’ science learning and civic engagement and also strengthen civil society. Next, the paper examines current educational practices related to CSE, such as citizen science, exploring socioscientific issues, and various civic education pedagogies, detailing what researchers have learned from empirical studies of these practices. Building on this prior theory and research, we argue that CSE could motivate students both to learn science and become engaged in civic issues, with slightly different expected outcomes across the three CSE categories. We conclude by encouraging educators and researchers to explore the great potential of such practices, providing specific recommendations for curriculum development and empirical studies.
Science education in recent years has increasingly emphasized the connections between knowledge and matters of social importance. Socioscientific issues (SSIs)—complex, often controversial issues linked to the development of science and technology—are widely recognized as a valuable arena for the school curriculum to foster students’ scientific literacy. This paper reviews the research literature on how science teachers teach socioscientific issues with 25 empirical studies published between 2004 and 2019. The results show that teachers generally hold a partially informed understanding of SSI-based teaching. Multifarious challenges facing teachers in teaching SSIs are mainly at the teacher, student, and policy levels. However, our findings suggest that teachers lack explicit strategies to cope with these challenges and that SSI-based teaching should not rely on individual teachers alone. We argue for more support for teachers to improve the quality of their implementation of SSIs. This review has implications for education policymakers, teacher educators, school leaders, and teachers to respond to the challenges facing teachers in teaching SSIs collaboratively. Potential directions for further research are also discussed.
Educators have been increasingly concerned with what can be done about “post-truth” problems—that is, threats to people's abilities to know what is true—such as the spread of misinformation and denial of well-established scientific claims. The articles and commentaries in this special issue present diverse perspectives on how “post-truth” problems related to scientific and socio-scientific issues might be educationally addressed. The goal of this introductory article is to review and analyze the educational responses to the “post-truth” condition that are reflected in this special issue and in the literature at large. We argue that these responses have employed four lenses that focus on different underlying factors related to people's ways of knowing: not knowing how to know, fallible ways of knowing, not caring about truth (enough), and disagreeing about how to know. Each of these lenses offers different explanations of how education might aggravate or mitigate “post-truth” troubles.
The purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of community-based socioscientific issue programmes (SSI-COMM) regarding the issue of abandoned animals on promoting middle school students’ understanding of the issue and their character and values as citizens. An SSI-COMM program, called ‘Save Abandoned Pets! (SAP),’ was implemented in four middle schools located in Seoul; 172 seventh graders voluntarily participated in the programme over eight weeks. Data were collected by observation with detailed field-notes, two questionnaires, and individual interviews with the participating students, instructors and teachers, and local experts. Results indicated that there was a statistically significant increase in their understanding of the abandoned animal issue (QU-SSI) and character and values as citizens (CVGCA) after implementing SSI-COMM. Qualitative data analysis also revealed that the SAP programme prompted the students to consider the healthy relationship between human beings and animals, how badly our behaviours could threaten animals or destroy their well-being, and what kinds of efforts we could make for humans and animals to live together. Ultimately, the students felt sympathy and empathy for the abandoned animals and responsibility to take care of them by participating in the SAP programme.
This study aimed to investigate how the community-based socioscientific issues program (SSI-COMM) affected middle school students’ sense of place (SOP) and character development as citizens. We designed and implemented SSI-COMM on fine dust, abandoned pets, and recycling issues that were closely related to the students’ local communities. SSI-COMM consisted of four phases, and in each phase, students engaged in various activities both within and outside of school. A total of 441 seventh graders participated in SSI-COMM over 8 weeks. Two questionnaires were used to measure the changes in students’ SOP and character development (CVGCA) through SSI-COMM. Paired t test was used to compare the effects of SSI-COMM on SOP and CVGCA. In addition, hierarchical cluster analysis was conducted to identify and describe the students who showed similar patterns based on score changes in SOP and CVGCA and to create student profiles to investigate how to appropriately target those students to develop their SOP and CVGCA. The results indicated that students’ SOP and CVGCA scores improved after the students participated in SSI-COMM. In detail, a 6-cluster option was determined to provide the best representation of the data measured before and after intervention (groups A to F). Although there were some differences in the pattern of score change among groups, four groups out of six groups (groups A, B, C, and D; about 69%) showed a positive change after implementing SSI-COMM. SOP scores were found to be statistically significant in all groups except group E, and CVGCA scores were statistically significant only in groups A, B, and C.
Science education is an important dimension of the European Commission’s Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) objectives; however, RRI is not an explicit focus of biology teaching and few biology teachers have experience in integrating RRI in classroom practice. This study examines the impact of a three 80-minute RRI and active citizenship module on 11th grade biology students, based on the SSIBL pedagogical framework. A representative national sample of 11th grade biology students in Cyprus (n = 398) participated. A pre-post research design examined impact in relation to students’ conceptual understanding regarding cholesterol and its regulation, their understanding of the controversy about cholesterol regulation, awareness of RRI components, feeling of responsibility and willingness to act. Analyses indicated statistically significant gains in conceptual understanding and the understanding of the controversy about cholesterol regulation and awareness of RRI components, as well as in students’ socio-scientific accountability (feeling of responsibility and willingness to act). Conceptual understanding showed increased correlations with Controversy understanding and RRI understanding forming the three of them the cognitive elements of individuals understanding. All of the examined variables are deemed, as of great importance for the design, implementation and evaluation of innovative biology RRI and active citizenship modules.
Preparing students to achieve the lofty goal of functional scientific literacy entails addressing the normative and non-normative facets of socioscientific issues (SSI) such as scientific processes, the nature of science (NOS) and diverse sociocultural perspectives. SSI instructional approaches have demonstrated some efficacy for promoting students’ NOS views, compassion for others, and decision-making. However, extant investigations appear to neglect fully engaging students through authentic SSI in several ways. These
include: (i) providing SSI instruction through classroom approaches that are divorced from students’ lived experiences; (ii) demonstrating a contextual misalignment between SSI and NOS (particularly evident in NOS assessments); and (iii) framing decision-making and position-taking analogously—with the latter being an unreliable indicator of how people truly act. The significance of the convergent parallel mixed-methods investigation reported here is how it responds to these shortcomings through exploring how place-based SSI
instruction focused on the contentious environmental issue of wolf reintroduction in the Greater Yellowstone
Area impacted sixty secondary students’ NOS views, compassion toward those impacted by contentious
environmental issues, and pro-environmental intent. Moreover, this investigation explores how those
perspectives associate with the students’ pro-environmental action of donating to a Yellowstone environmental
organization. Results demonstrate that the students’ NOS views became significantly more accurate and
contextualized, with moderate to large effect, through the place-based SSI instruction. Through that
instruction, the students also exhibited significant gains in their compassion for nature and people impacted
by contentious environmental issues and pro-environmental intent. Further analyses showed that donating
students developed and demonstrated significantly more robust and contextualized NOS views, compassion
for people and nature impacted by contentious environmental issues, and pro-environmental intent than their
non-donating counterparts. Pedagogical implications include how place-based learning in authentic settings
could better prepare students to understand NOS, become socioculturally aware, and engage SSI across a
variety of contexts.
Given the rapid development of modern biotechnology, attention to socioscientific issues in educational contexts is crucially important to support students in becoming responsible citizens. The authors' research focused on the impact of discussing socioscientific issues during biology lessons under 3 different treatments (teacher guided, student centered, text only), comparing these treatments with regard to cognitive achievement, cognitive load, and instructional efficiency. The biology lessons were part of an educational intervention with Bavarian 10th-grade students (N = 583) in an out-of-school laboratory on plant genetic engineering. The teacher-guided group performed significantly better regarding knowledge increase, while the cognitive load of the student-centered group was significantly higher. Accordingly, teacher-guided discussion led to the highest instructional efficiency, suggesting an enhanced cognitive achievement through the teacher's guidance. However, a student-centered approach allows students to contribute more of their own opinions, making further research in this area desirable. Finally, we discuss potential implications for teaching and teacher education.
Socioscientific issues encompass social dilemmas with conceptual or technological links to science. The process of resolving these issues is best characterized by informal reasoning which describes the generation and evaluation of positions in response to complex situations. This article presents a critical review of research related to informal reasoning regarding socioscientific issues. The findings reviewed address (a) socioscientific argumentation; (b) relationships between nature of science conceptualizations and socioscientific decision making; (c) the evaluation of information pertaining to socioscientific issues, including student ideas about what counts as evidence; and (d) the influence of an individual's conceptual understanding on his or her informal reasoning. This synthesis of the current state of socioscientific issue research provides a comprehensive framework from which future research can be motivated and decisions about the design and implementation of socioscientific curricula can be made. The implications for future research and classroom applications are discussed. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 41: 513–536, 2004
The pretest-posttest control group design can be analyzed with the posttest as dependent variable and the pretest as covariate (ANCOVA), or with the difference between posttest and pretest as dependent variable (CHANGE). These two methods can give contradictory results if groups differ at pretest, a phenomenon which is known as Lord’s paradox. Literature claims that ANCOVA is preferable if treatment assignment is based on randomization or on the pretest, and questionable for pre-existing groups. Some literature suggests that Lord’s paradox has to do with measurement error in the pretest. This paper shows two new things: First, the claims are confirmed by proving the mathematical equivalence of ANCOVA to a repeated measures model without group effect at pretest. Second, correction for measurement error in the pretest is shown to lead back to ANCOVA or to CHANGE, depending on the assumed absence or presence of a true group difference at pretest. These two new theoretical results are illustrated with multilevel (mixed) regression and structural equations modeling of data from two studies.
keywords:
ANCOVA, nonrandomized studies, Lord’s paradox, regression to the mean, regression to different means, mixed regression, measurement error, true score regression.
This paper presents situated learning as a theoretical framework for conceptualising new ways to approach science education. Key constructs associated with this framework, including communities of practice, Discourse and identity, are introduced. I advance an argument to develop classroom communities of practice based on engaged citizenship relative to the negotiation of socio‐scientific issues (SSI). The aim of this approach would be student development of practices and dispositions that better prepare them for active participation in society, particularly in the context of science‐related social issues. Extant literature regarding the effects of SSI interventions is reviewed and synthesised to explore the extent to which the articulated vision has been enacted and to better understand affordances and constraints associated with this enactment. Twenty‐four studies are examined that meet criteria including recency, a focus on empirical investigations of SSI interventions and research rigor. The results of these research reports are categorised in an emergent taxonomy of findings with the following major categories: interest and motivation, content knowledge, nature of science, higher‐order thinking and community of practice. Finally, the paper explicitly considers the value of framing SSI based research and practice in terms of a situated learning perspective.
Sadler: This chapter raises several interesting issues associated with the assessment of argumentation. There is obviously a great
deal of support throughout the science education community for featuring argumentation as a fundamental scientific practice
that ought to be featured in science learning experiences. However, the tools available for assessing argumentation both for
research and teaching purposes remain somewhat limited. Toulmin has had an enormous impact on how science educators think
about argumentation and the assessment of arguments, and modifications of the Toulmin argument pattern have been used extensively
for assessment purposes (Erduran, Simon, & Osborne, 2004). As discussed in the chapter, Toulmin’s model can be useful but
it has a number of drawbacks.
The question of what students gain by engaging in socioscientific inquiry is addressed in two ways. First, relevant literature
is surveyed to build the case that socioscientific issues (SSI) can serve as useful contexts for teaching and learning science
content. Studies are reviewed which document student gains in discipline specific content knowledge as well as understandings
of the nature of science. SSI are also positioned as vehicles for addressing citizenship education within science classrooms.
Although the promotion of citizenship goals seems widely advocated, the specifics of how this may be accomplished remain underdeveloped.
To address this issue, we introduce socioscientific reasoning as a construct which captures a suite of practices fundamental to the negotiation of SSI. In the second phase of the project,
interviews with 24 middle school students from classes engaged in socioscientific inquiry serve as the basis for the development
of an emergent rubric for socioscientific reasoning. Variation in practices demonstrated by this sample are explored and implications
drawn for advancing socioscientific reasoning as an educationally meaningful and assessable construct.