Teachers’ Coordination of Dialogic and Authoritative Discourses Promoting Specific Goals in Socioscientific Issue-Based Teaching

Abstract

The integration of socioscientific issues (SSI) into science teaching requires that teachers manage classroom discussions in which various perspectives are considered and students' contributions are recognized. The present study aimed to provide knowledge of how classroom discussions on SSI can be structured and implemented to pursue specific teaching purposes. In this study, two secondary science teachers' employment of communicative approaches during four discussions on SSI was analysed. In the studied context, communicative approaches can be described as involving various or only a single perspective on SSI and as being either interactive or non-interactive. The results elucidate how teachers can make purposeful use of different communicative approaches to facilitate students' decision-making while promoting complexity in their reasoning. The results also show how teachers can promote cumulativity, in terms of their recognition of students' contributions to discussions. It is proposed that teachers can use the concept of communicative approaches as an analytical tool to reflect on and develop aspects of teaching practice in relation to the goals that they wish to achieve.

Instructional guidelines based on conceptions of students and scientists about economic and population growth within planetary boundaries

“…In this regard, the integration of socio-scientific issues-based tasks in the classroom is suitable, because it allows students to work in an interdisciplinary manner and stimulates critical thinking (Karpudewan & Roth, 2018;Wan & Bi, 2019;Wang et al, 2017). Such discussions about socio-scientific issues should include interrelations between politics, economics, and environment at different levels and be critical as well as complex in order to enhance the reconstruction of their conceptions (Bossér & Lindahl, 2020;Chu & Treagust, 2014;Sormunen, Juuti, & Lavonen, 2019;Wan & Bi, 2019;Wang et al, 2018). In our study, we observed that students believed in controlling the world population to remain within the planetary boundaries.…”

“…The creative problem solving (CPS) method (Huang et al, 2019) is suitable for this purpose as it develops solutions of the complex real-world problem not starting from the problem, but backwards from the ideal situation to the problem. Also, teaching approaches, which involve active student participation in topic-related problem-solving processes and give them the freedom to critically reflect on different perspectives, allow students to better understand complex environmental topics (Bossér & Lindahl, 2020;Huang et al, 2019;Karpudewan & Roth, 2018;Wang et al, 2018).…”

Insights into the interaction and discourse in the senior phase natural sciences classroom

“…Therefore, interaction and discourse are key factors that have a significant impact on the teaching and learning of science. Bosser and Lindahl (2021) indicates that a teacher uses language to orient or guide the students' conceptual activity in a desired direction to achieve the desired outcomes.…”

An Action Research on Improving Classroom Communication and Interaction in Social Studies Teaching

“…Accordingly, the current social studies curriculum in Turkey was designed to adopt a research and inquiry-based learning strategy. With the implementation of this new curriculum, the teaching style required a reformulation by putting extra emphasis on classroom discourse where student contribution is of crucial importance because the in-class activities in this new system provide a chance for the students to meet and think about new/different perspectives [3]. In this new education system, an instructor's knowledge of the subject matter is critical, but not sufficient [4].…”