Socio-Scientific Issues, Sustainability and Science Education

Abstract

Thepapersinthisspecialissueprovideavariety ofperspectivesonSSIandsustainabilitylinkedto science education. Indeed, if one were looking for some indication of convergence in thisgrowing area of research interest one would not find a clear indication of it here. However, thepapers are interesting for this very reason of the ir diversity, since they represent a number ofstrands of thinking relating sustainability and SSIs, and school science. While the papers allrelatecentrallytoSSIasanapproachto teachin gandlearning,theyfocustoavaryingdegreeonsustainability, and on science. In this commentary, I will first attempt an overview of the issuesthey raise and attempt to situate them with respect to some common strands of thinking, beforeresponding to the key implications I see in the pa pers for the school science curriculum. I willjustifydoingthisonthreegrounds.First,allthepapersinsomemeasurehavethingstosayaboutpedagogy, structure and epistemology of school science, and they say this in interestinglydifferent ways. Second, whatever the historical approach in environmental education/ESDresearch, often involving an antagonistic stance to the traditional science curriculum and itscompanion epistemology (an issue raised by Robottom and echoed to some degree in a numberof the other papers), these papers as a set demons trate clearly the important role that the schoolscience curriculum could, and sometimes does, pla y in student learning about sustainability. Infact, on my reading, the ‘pointy end’ of the issues raised in the papers relates to this issue of thenatureandstatusofscienceknowledgeinthecurri culumanditsappropriaterole.Third,Ihavealongstandinginterestinreforminscienceeducation,andtheissuesraisedinthesepapersprovidesomepowerfulcommentariesonthewaysthatscienceeducationmightbe,andshouldbeframedif it is to engage students in a science that is relevant and powerful for them as future citizens.The papers have much to say on a number of important curriculum dimensions:1. the structures of teaching and learning about SSI related to the science curriculum area2. the pedagogies evident in the models of SSI teaching and learning3. the broader purposes that frame the interventions4. the epistemological stances evident in the interventions described, particularlyconcerning the status and setting of scientific knowledge