Educational Configurations for Teaching Environmental Socioscientific Issues Within The Perspective of Sustainability

Abstract

Education for Sustainability has become an institutional requirement in many countries. It takes many forms that can integrate the teaching of environmental Socioscientific Issues (SSIs). In this context, we present the French notion of Socially Acute Questions (SAQs). We develop a theoretical frame to analyse educational configurations applied to the teaching of SAQs within the perspective of sustainability. This frame is built with a reference to a matrix integrating attributes of knowledge (universal, plural, engaged or contextualised), teachers' epistemological postures (scientism, utilitarianism, skepticsm or relativism) and various didactic strategies (doctrinal, problematizing, critical or pragmatic). To illustrate this frame, three situations of teaching-learning are compared.

Challenging students' perceptions of sustainability using an Earth Systems Science approach

“…A major focus of the pedagogy in this course incorporated what Simonneaux and Simonneaux (2012) describe as critical and, problematizing strategies. Critical strategy aims at developing students' critical perspectives of events by providing students with experiences that teach them "How to argue and assess expertise and different stances on complex environmental issues which can involve both uncertainties and risks" (p. 82).…”

Educating for resilience in the North: building a toolbox for teachers

“…Within compulsory public education systems, mandated curriculum could help the resilience-building learning tools discussed here to reach a high proportion of the school-aged population. Curriculum policies that promote concepts of sustainability and resilience have been mandated in some national education agendas, for example, futures thinking in New Zealand and Australia (Jones et al 2011) and sustainability concepts in France (Simonneaux and Simonneaux 2012). The resilience framework for education Ecology and Society 20(1): 46 http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol20/iss1/art46/ proposed by Krasny (2010, 2011) may serve as an important tool for curriculum developers and teachers seeking to align curriculum learning goals with resilience-based outcomes.…”

Desarrollo de capacidades y formación en competencias ambientales en el profesorado de ciencias

“…Particularmente en la última década, la perspectiva de alfabetización científica en el contexto cts viene adecuándose a lo que se conoce como cultura científica (en la que las ciencias se conciben como dimensión cultural, formando parte de una ecología de saberes, dispuesta al diálogo, por ejemplo con el conocimiento ancestral de los pueblos originarios, en pro de solucionar problemas de alta complejidad del campo ambiental) que vinculan formación científica con la formación humanista para la toma de posición frente a cuestiones socialmente vivas (Simonneaux y Simonneaux, 2012), mediante controversias sociocientíficas que invitan a tomar decisiones en un marco de dilemas morales y que tiene que ver con salud, deporte, riesgos bilógicos, combustibles fósiles y calentamiento global, agua e industrialización, movilidad, transporte y territorio, seguridad alimentaria, consumo y producción, transgénicos, clonación, armas nucleares, genoma humano, nanotecnología, células embrionarias, la pobreza, entre otros (Gordillo, 2006;Martínez y Parga, 2013;.…”