Enhancing Pre-service Science Teachers’ Practice according to SocioScientific Issue (SSI)-Based Teaching through Collaborative Action Research

Sasithep Pitiporntapin

doi:10.5539/ass.v11n28p77

Abstract

The objective of this research was to enhance two case studies of pre-service science teachers’ practice according to SSI-based teaching through collaborative action research. The case study participants had taken a field experience course in the universities in Bangkok in the academic year 2014. The researcher gathered data from classroom observation, students’ journal entries, and student artifacts. In addition, they were asked to write journal entries about their practices. Moreover, informal interviews were used for clarification. These collected data were analyzed using within-case and cross-case analyses. The findings showed that both case studies developed grade 10 students’ argumentation skills through SSI-based teaching in natural resource unit with 4 stages of teaching: issue stage; exploration stage; argument stage; and decision making stage for promoting students’ argumentation. Based on the collaborative action research, the participants changed their teaching to engage students with SSI; increasing facilitating of students’ group working in order to get more essential information; using role play to promote the effective students’ argumentation; and providing enough time for reviewing data to better support decision making. Keywords: Pre-service science teachers, Socioscientific issue-based teaching, Collaborative action research

Highlights

As science and technology continue to change rapidly around the world, these changes produce many socio-scientific issues (SSIs) in which social dilemmas are associated with science; SSI has become an important topic in science education for literacy (Kolstø, 2001)
Both William and Nancy used SSI-based teaching in their classrooms in order to promote their students’ argumentation skills, as their students had rarely used this skill before. They designed their SSI-based teaching lesson with four stages of teaching: the issue stage; the exploration stage; the argumentation stage; and the decision-making stage. They changed their teaching practices according to collaborative action research as follows
4.1 Issue Stage: Finding More Minds-on Activities to Hook Students’ Interest on SSIs. William began his SSI-based lesson by asking his students to read a news article about a public protest of the construction of a coal-fired plant. He observed that his students did not pay attention while they read; most of them could not share any ideas they recalled about these problems and any causes of the problem

Summary

Introduction

As science and technology continue to change rapidly around the world, these changes produce many socio-scientific issues (SSIs) in which social dilemmas are associated with science; SSI has become an important topic in science education for literacy (Kolstø, 2001). A lack of understanding of SSIs may lead to feelings of fear, anger, and distrust towards the scientific community (Hodson, 2008). Pre-service science teachers (PSTs) represent a important group of prospective science teachers to organizations seeking to acquire effective SSI-based teachers. In the context of educational reform, PSTs are expected to develop their understanding of new classroom practices (Bell, 1998). As a lecturer in a teacher-education institution, the researchers found that collaborative action research is considered a professional development strategy that brings teachers, researchers, and university educators together to collaborate, with the common goal of improving and changing teachers’ practice (Capobianco & Feldman, 2006)

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Conclusion