Developing and Using an S³R Model to Analyze Reasoning in Web‐Based Cross‐National Exchanges on Sustainability

Abstract

ABSTRACT:Within the increasing body of research that examines students' reasoning on socioscientific issues, we consider in particular student reasoning concerning acute, open-ended questions that bring out the complexities and uncertainties embedded in illstructured problems. In this paper, we propose a socioscientific sustainability reasoning (S 3 R) model to analyze students' reasoning exchanges on environmental socially acute questions (ESAQs). The paper describes the development of an epistemological analysis of how sustainability perspectives can be integrated into socioscientific reasoning, which emphasizes the need for S 3 R to be both grounded in context and collective. We argue the complexity of ESAQs requires a consideration of multiple dimensions that form the basis of our S 3 R analysis model: problematization, interactions, knowledge, uncertainties, values, and governance. For each dimension, in the model we have identified indicators of four levels of complexity. We investigated the usefulness of the model in identifying improvements in reasoning that flow from cross-national web-based exchanges between groups of French and Australian students, concerning a local and a global ESAQ. The S 3 R model successfully captured the nature of reasoning about socioscientific sustainability issues, with the collective negotiation of multiple forms of knowledge as a key characteristic

Engaging with socially acute questions: Development and validation of an interactional reasoning framework

“…Recognition of complexity in S3R requires integration of diverse cognitive operations (Morin et al, ). We observed in the forum exchanges and wiki construction (Morin et al, ) the orientation toward collective disposition for action as a key element, consistent with our examination of collective rather than individual reasoning.…”

“…We thus believe it is of importance to train students to participate within extended peer communities. The research extends previous analyses (Morin et al, ) in which we developed a six‐dimensional framework of SocioScientific Sustainability reasoning (S3R) and demonstrated improvement in reasoning quality flowing from collaborative interactions between cross‐national groups of teacher education students.…”

“…We also established that, compared to exchanges between within-country groups, the webbased exchanges between the Australian and French groups led to significantly greater increases in reasoning (for more details on these findings, see Morin et al, 2013, p 164), and we argue that this was due to the difference between the viewpoints of the groups associated with different Table 2 Summary of the S3R framework (Morin et al, 2014) P: Problematisation-Are the disparate aspects (environmental, social, economical) of the situation tackled from different perspectives…”

“…Through analysis of changes in the collective productions between Wikis 1 and 2 we established (Morin et al, ibid .) varied patterns of growth in reasoning flowing from the collaborative cross‐country discussions.…”

Assessment of scientific literacy: Development and validation of the Quantitative Assessment of Socio-Scientific Reasoning (QuASSR)

“…Simonneaux and Simonneaux (2009) expanded SSR by adding two components: identifying risks/uncertainties and accounting for culture and ethical principles in decision-making (2009). Morin, Simonneaux, Simonneaux, and Tytler (2013) and Morin, Simonneaux, Simonneaux, Tytler, and Barraza (2014) further refined their model by incorporating argumentation and a focus on sustainability. We interpret the expansion of SSR by Simonneaux and Simonneaux (2009) as an attempt to account for greater diversity in student navigation of complex issues.…”