Students’ socio-scientific reasoning on controversies from the viewpoint of education for sustainable development

Simonneaux, Laurence; Simonneaux, Jean

doi:10.1007/s11422-008-9141-x

Cited by 85 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Socio-scientific and sustainability issues are among the most important challenges facing society, and the science education community has offered strong support for the inclusion of these issues as significant curricular foci within science classrooms (e.g., Pouliot 2008;Simonneaux and Simonneaux 2008;Zeidler et al 2002). Given the contemporary and evolving nature of these issues, mass media serve as obvious sources of information for teachers and students working to better understand and/or to generate solutions for these issues.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Science Teachers’ Use of Mass Media to Address Socio-Scientific and Sustainability Issues

2011

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The currency, relevancy and changing nature of science makes it a natural topic of focus for mass media outlets. Science teachers and students can capitalize on this wealth of scientific information to explore socio-scientific and sustainability issues; however, without a lens on how those media are created and how representations of science are constructed through media, the use of mass media in the science classroom may be risky. Limited research has explored how science teachers naturally use mass media to explore scientific issues in the classroom or how mass media is used to address potential overlaps between socio-scientific-issue based instruction and education for sustainability. This naturalistic study investigated the reported and actual classroom uses of mass media by secondary science teachers' to explore socio-scientific and sustainability issues as well as the extent to which their instructional approaches did or did not overlap with frameworks for SSI-based instruction, education for sustainability, and media literacy education. The results of this study suggest that secondary science teachers use mass media to explore socio-scientific and sustainability issues, but their use of frameworks aligned with SSIbased, education for sustainability, and media literacy education was limited. This paper provides suggestions for how we, as science educators and researchers, can advance a teaching and learning agenda for encouraging instruction that more fully utilizes the potential of mass media to explore socio-scientific issues in line with perspectives from education for sustainability.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Science Teachers’ Use of Mass Media to Address Socio-Scientific and Sustainability Issues

2011

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“…The dimensions connected to SSIs are also being discussed from broader scales, such as ScienceTechnology-Society (STS) (Chang et al 2009;Sadler 2009), sustainable development (Chang et al 2009;Simonneaux 2001;Simonneaux and Simonneaux 2009), ethics (Sadler and Donnelly 2006;Zeidler and Keefer 2003;Zeidler et al 2005), an ecological framework (Colucci-Gray et al 2006), or a humanistic view (Dos Santos 2009). Although there are cross-disciplinary dimensions included in the SSI research cited above, there is an existing consensus that SSIs have four important features: complexity, multiple perspectives, inquiry and scepticism (Albe 2008;Colucci-Gray et al 2006;Fensham 2008;Sadler et al 2007;Simonneaux and Simonneaux 2009). Accoridng to Sadler et al, these features have emerged from the practices for decision-making in the SSI context and ought to be addressed as citizenship goal (Sadler et al 2007, p. The SEE-SEP model has been developed to integrate the cross-disciplinary dimensions and the four features of SSIs into a more holistic viewpoint (Chang Rundgren and Rundgren 2010).…”

Section: The See-sep Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using the SEE-SEP Model to Analyze Upper Secondary Students’ Use of Supporting Reasons in Arguing Socioscientific Issues

2011

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To achieve the goal of scientific literacy, the skills of argumentation have been emphasized in science education during the past decades. But the extent to which students can apply scientific knowledge to their argumentation is still unclear. The purpose of this study was to analyse 80 Swedish upper secondary students' informal argumentation on four socioscientific issues (SSIs) to explore students' use of supporting reasons and to what extent students used scientific knowledge in their arguments. Eighty upper secondary students were asked to express their opinions on one SSI topic they chose through written reports. The four SSIs in this study include global warming, genetically modified organisms (GMO), nuclear power, and consumption. To analyse students' supporting reasons from a holistic view, we used the SEE-SEP model, which links the six subject areas of sociology/culture (So), environment (En), economy (Ec), science (Sc), ethics/ morality (Et) and policy (Po) connecting with three aspects, knowledge, value and personal experience (KVP). The results showed that students used value to a greater extent (67%) than they did scientific knowledge (27%) for all four SSI topics. According to the SEE-SEP model, the distribution of supporting reasons generated by students differed among the SSI topics. Also, some alternative concepts were disclosed in students' arguments. The implications for research and education are discussed.

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“…Difficulties are particularly apparent when tackling socioscientific issues (SSIs), which are complex in nature and where there is not necessarily one 'correct' answer (Sadler et al, 2007). Such controversies include aspects of uncertainty and risk and raise hard, emotional questions, referred to by Simonneaux & Simonneaux (2009) as socially acute questions (SAQs). Students need the opportunity to discuss such issues, and relate these arguments to their own values and beliefs (Oulton et al, 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Student Decision-Making about a Globally Familiar Socioscientific Issue: The value of sharing and comparing views with international counterparts

Grace

Lee²,

Asshoff

et al. 2015

International Journal of Science Education

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This paper focuses on the views of 16-17-year-old science students from England, Germany, Hong Kong and Sweden on whale hunting, and their perceptions of the views of their international counterparts. The students were all provided with the same decision making task, discussed the issue in small groups and then presented their views on video, which were shared with their counterparts. The findings show that the decision making task served to deepen and modify students' views across all nationalities, and the students generally valued and learned from the sharing of views with students of the same age from around the world. However, an important discovery was that the German students' opinions often ran counter to those from the other three locations, and the paper cautions against making broad-sweeping generalisations about students' views on socioscientific issues.

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Students’ socio-scientific reasoning on controversies from the viewpoint of education for sustainable development

Cited by 85 publications

References 10 publications

Science Teachers’ Use of Mass Media to Address Socio-Scientific and Sustainability Issues

Science Teachers’ Use of Mass Media to Address Socio-Scientific and Sustainability Issues

Using the SEE-SEP Model to Analyze Upper Secondary Students’ Use of Supporting Reasons in Arguing Socioscientific Issues

Student Decision-Making about a Globally Familiar Socioscientific Issue: The value of sharing and comparing views with international counterparts

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