Impact of place‐based socioscientific issues instruction on students' contextualization of socioscientific orientations

Abstract

AbstractThis investigation examined how a 6 week environmental topics course that included place‐based socioscientific issues (SSI) instruction in the Greater Yellowstone Area (GYA) in the United States of America influenced 21 postsecondary students' expressed socioscientific orientations of Ecological Worldviews (including Interconnectedness and Sustainable Development); Social and Moral Compassion (including Moral and Ethical Sensitivity, Perspective Taking, and Empathetic Concern); Socioscientific Accountability (including Feelings of Responsibility and Willingness to Act); and Scientific Evidence Views (including Affordances and Constraints of Scientific Evidence). The students, who were enrolled in diverse academic majors, provided significantly different and better contextualizedtu qualitative responses across all eight socioscientific orientation dimensions after the SSI course. For instance, the students often referred to SSI they experienced, such as when indicating feeling more connected to nature and accountable for compassionate and sustainable environmental issues resolution. Moreover, the students were better able to utilize the perspectives of those they interacted with who were incurring SSI impacts (e.g., ranchers and Native Americans in the GYA) to knowledgably articulate how effective SSI resolution requires weighing scientific evidence in juxtaposition with sociocultural and ethical considerations. The coherence to which our methodological approaches and socioscientific orientation rubrics revealed how the students expressed complex cognitive, emotive, and intentional variables highlight the importance of the SSI field's need to use such standardized qualitative measures. Pedagogical considerations addressed include how to effectively implement place‐based instruction where students engage diverse groups of people experiencing and resolving SSI where they occur.