Cultivating Water Literacy in STEM Education: Undergraduates’ Socio-Scientific Reasoning about Socio-Hydrologic Issues

David C Owens,Cory T Forbes,Destini N Petitt,Diane Lally

doi:10.3390/w12102857

Abstract

Water-literate individuals effectively reason about the hydrologic concepts that underlie socio-hydrological issues (SHI), but functional water literacy also requires concomitant reasoning about the societal, non-hydrological aspects of SHI. Therefore, this study explored the potential for the socio-scientific reasoning construct (SSR), which includes consideration of the complexity of issues, the perspectives of stakeholders involved, the need for ongoing inquiry, skepticism about information sources, and the affordances of science toward the resolution of the issue, to aid undergraduates in acquiring such reasoning skills. In this fixed, embedded mixed methods study (N = 91), we found SHI to hold great potential as meaningful contexts for the development of water literacy, and that SSR is a viable and useful construct for better understanding undergraduates’ reasoning about the hydrological and non-hydrological aspects of SHI. The breadth of reasoning sources to which participants referred and the depth of the SSR they exhibited in justifying those sources varied within and between the dimensions of SSR. A number of participants’ SSR was highly limited. Implications for operationalizing, measuring, and describing undergraduate students’ SSR, as well as for supporting its development for use in research and the classroom, are discussed.

Highlights

Societies face increasing natural-resource-related challenges associated with the food–energy–water nexus [1]
Three-quarters of participants were able take the perspective of both stakeholders, few indicated with justification additional information sources necessary for resolving the issue. These findings suggest that even after completing a course directed at understanding and resolving socio-hydrological issues (SHI), undergraduates still struggled with recognizing the various aspects of the SHI that contribute to its ill-defined nature and the ongoing inquiry necessary for informed consideration and resolution of SHI
Postsecondary instructors looking to implement instruction in the context of SHI should task students with considering and evaluating the means by which others reason about similar issues to better inform the collective and aid their taking of perspectives, exhibiting of empathy, and having of conversations to overcome stated challenges, contributing to the strength of civil society. These findings have implications for the design of undergraduate courses focused on supporting students’ functional water literacy. These findings provide evidence that SHI serve as viable contexts for undergraduates to reason about hydrological and non-hydrological aspects of water-related issues, both of which are requisite to functional water literacy

Summary

Introduction

Societies face increasing natural-resource-related challenges associated with the food–energy–water nexus [1]. Water 2020, 12, 2857 complexity of the issue, the diverse and often opposing views of all stakeholders involved, the need for ongoing inquiry into the SSI and skepticism when considering media sources, as well as the affordances of science and non-science considerations toward the resolution of the SSI Together, these five dimensions of reasoning about SSI comprise the socio-scientific reasoning construct (SSR) [7], a suite of practices that contribute to the thoughtful negotiation of SSI

Objectives

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion