Assessing students’ performances in decision-making: coping strategies of biology teachers

Abstract

Decision-making in socioscientific issues (SSI) constitutes a real challenge for both biology teachers and learners. The assessment of students' performances in SSIs constitutes a problem, especially for biology teachers. The study at hand was conducted in Germany and uses a qualitative approach following the research procedures of grounded theory to focus on teachers' concepts and, especially, coping strategies in assessment concerning students' decision-making in SSIs. Semi-structured interviews with six teachers, in combination with video-vignettes, were used for data generation. The results show predominantly defensive strategies when teachers are confronted with the assessment of students' performances in SSIs. These results and implications for teacher education and teacher training are discussed.

10. ja 11. klassi õpilaste bioloogia-alase kirjaoskuse kognitiivsete komponentide hindamine

“…Sotsiaal-teadusliku sisuga probleemide lahendamine bioloogiatunnis arendab õpilastes oskust iseseisvalt vastu võtta põhjendatud ja argumenteeritud otsuseid, mis lähtuvad bioloogiateadmistest. Otsuste tegemise ja vastuvõtmise arendamine bioloogiatunnis ei asenda küll täielikult reaalelulist olukorda, kuid annab võimaluse õpilastel kokku puutuda igapäeva-eluliste olukordadega, millel on mitu lahendit, ning end nendeks ette valmistada (Steffen & Hößle, 2016). Varasemad uuringud (Kahan et al, 2012;Papadouris & Constantinou, 2010) on näidanud, et igapäevaelulise otsuse tegemisel ei osutu alati määravaks loodusteaduslikud teadmised, aga kuna koolibioloogia kontekstis ei ole seda teemat varem uuritud, siis on praeguses uurimistöös võetud üheks uuritavaks komponendiks just sotsiaal teadusliku otsuse tegemine.…”

Socio-scientific issues implementation as science learning material

“…Figure 1 shows the various issues of SSI research results in various countries in the world. The issues are as follows: the environmental management issue of an invasive species, and reservoir in Taiwan [18,19], nuclear in Korea [20], environmental pollution in Indonesia [21,22], health, environmental, whaling, and biodiversity in Sweden [23][24][25][26], climate change, energy, genetical manipulation in Germany [27][28][29], biology, genetics, and democratic in the US [30,31], genetic manipulation in food in the Midwest and Denmark [32,33], biology in the UK [34][35][36], cloning and genetic screening in Australia [37], biotechnology in Florida [38], Energy in Spain [39].…”

Strengthening the Tension of Socio-Scientific Issues Based Learning to Promoting Democratic Life : A Systematic Review

“…Helping students make decisions regarding SSI is helping them not to make decisions intuitively but helping them to make decisions from various alternatives and points of view (Cebesoy & Rundgren, 2021). In short, in making decisions related to SSI, students are not only required to use their knowledge including content knowledge (or conceptual knowledge) (Sakschewski et al, 2014), knowledge about ethics and morality (Steffen & Hößle, 2017), as an essential part of develop arguments and making decisions, they must be able to evaluate solutions critically (Sakamoto et al, 2021), but also in making decisions related to SSI, they are required to use their understanding of the nature of science (NOS), in which the NOS is a tool for obtaining knowledge, constructing arguments, and evaluating evidence (Bilican, 2018), improve students' personal qualities, and improve students' social-scientific skills (Yapıcıoğlu & Kaptan, 2017).…”