Socioscientific Issues Instruction Research Articles

Designing and teaching socio-scientific issues online: digital curation in the science classroom

ABSTRACT This case study explored how Digital Curation (DC) can be applied to classroom Socio-Scientific Issues (SSI) instruction. It examined teachers’ perspectives on whether and how DC contributes to fostering the social and scientific dimensions of the SSI – the key components of the SSI-Teaching and Learning (SSI-TL) framework. Data were gathered from seven teachers during and after a professional development program on DC for science teachers designed to equip educators with resources to develop their own SSI-DC teaching units. The teachers indicated that DC enhanced the scientific and social dimensions of SSI, while also bolstering students’ digital skills, thus effectively addressing common hurdles to integrating both social and scientific dimensions in SSI instruction. Beyond presenting innovative strategies for the effective implementation of DC, the findings contribute to confirming the validity of the SSI-TL framework.

Improving Critical Thinking through AI-Supported Socio-Scientific Issues Instruction

Improving Critical Thinking through AI-Supported Socio-Scientific Issues Instruction

Elementary preservice teachers' pedagogical decisions about socioscientific issues instruction

AbstractSocioscientific issues (SSI) have been found to improve scientific literacy skills among K—12 students. Existing literature shows, however, that elementary preservice teachers are reluctant to implement SSI due to a lack of confidence with subject matter knowledge and knowledge of instruction concerning SSI. Previous research has focused on helping elementary preservice teachers overcome these concerns through microteaching, adapting existing curricula, and experiencing SSI through methods courses. While it has been noted that formal preparation is required for preservice teachers to feel confident in their abilities to facilitate SSI, little has been done to prepare elementary preservice teachers to facilitate SSI during field experiences. In this study, we explored the factors that influenced elementary preservice teachers' instructional decision‐making while planning and enacting SSI‐based instruction in the classroom. Community of practice (CoP) meetings provided formal training to prepare these elementary preservice teachers to facilitate SSI. Recordings of the CoP meetings, reflective journals, observations, and interviews served as data sources. Our findings revealed knowledge of students, instructional knowledge, and context as most influential in these elementary preservice teachers' pedagogical reasoning concerning SSI‐based instruction, while subject matter knowledge was the least considered. We discuss these findings and offer recommendations for how to use these considerations when planning future research to study elementary preservice teachers' SSI‐based instructional practice.

Teacher candidates’ views of future SSI instruction: a multiple case study

The instructional approach of incorporating socioscientific issues (SSI) into science teaching has been found to improve critical thinking and problem-solving skills among K-12 students. Preparation for how to facilitate SSI in the classroom, however, is limited, resulting in very few classrooms across the United States providing opportunities for K-12 students to grapple with these real-world problems. In this manuscript we compare the integration of socioscientific issues (SSI) within two different undergraduate course contexts: a science methods course that is part of an elementary educator preparation program and a science content course designed for secondary future educators. Through this comparison we aim to provide science education researchers and science teacher educators with empirical support related to how the delivery of SSI influences elementary to secondary teacher candidates’ views of SSI as they relate to student engagement, teacher effectiveness, and curricula. Leveraging a mixed methods case study approach, data from each course context were collected through Likert-type surveys and open-ended responses. Findings suggest exposure to SSI pedagogies in science methods and content courses influence teacher candidates’ views in different ways and we must consider field and course-based work occurring simultaneously while teacher candidates are learning about SSI-based instruction. Implications for this are discussed.

Pre-Service Science Teachers’ Understanding of Socio-Scientific Issues Instruction through a Co-Design and Co-Teaching Approach Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic

This qualitative case study explores the development of pre-service science teachers’ (PSTs) understanding of Socio-Scientific Issues (SSI) instruction. The study utilized a conceptual framework of SSI-based instruction and a three-phase approach involving co-designing solutions, co-designing curriculum materials, and co-teaching classes. Primary data sources included PSTs’ interviews and reflective journals, while artifacts, field notes, and curriculum materials served as secondary data sources. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data of six PSTs in a teacher preparation program. We found that the PSTs’ understanding of SSI instruction was enhanced in 12 features of three core aspects: design elements, learner experiences, and teacher attributes. “Engaging in higher-order practices” was the most prominent feature, observed across all three phases. The three-phase approach played a crucial role in promoting PSTs’ understanding of SSI instruction, with each phase guiding their understanding in distinct ways. Particularly, the co-designing solutions phase facilitated the development of PSTs’ “awareness of the social considerations associated with the issue”. While the co-designing curriculum materials phase was effective in promoting their understanding of “scaffolding for practice: providing scaffolding for higher-order practices. “The co-teaching classes phase played a crucial role in facilitating their understanding of “willingness to position oneself as a knowledge contributor rather than the sole authority”.

Shifting the Teaching Beliefs of Preservice Science Teachers About Socioscientific Issues in a Teacher Education Course.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how 22 preservice science teachers’ (PSTs’) beliefs about teaching socioscientific issues (SSI) changed after experiencing SSI instruction and reflection from both a learner’s perspective and a teacher’s perspective during a 12-week initial teacher education course. The study also explored the learning experiences associated with these changes. This study was conducted in Hong Kong, where the science, technology, society and environment (STSE) framework has been integrated into the secondary science curriculum but no SSI instruction is provided. Data were collected through learning tasks completed by the participants: (a) curriculum designs (pre-, mid- and post-course), (b) lesson plans (mid- and post-course) and (c) weekly reflective journals. Six profiles characterising teaching beliefs about SSI emerged from the data analysis. Qualitative analysis showed that the teaching beliefs of the PSTs had shifted from the traditional view that SSI should not be covered in science education to embracing SSI teaching. Three illustrative cases were used to capture key learning experiences and explore how these had led to a change in beliefs over time. These cases explained how PSTs’ reflection on the why, what and how of teaching SSI to students can shape their beliefs about teaching SSI. The results have implications for the development of a closer alignment between PST beliefs and the SSI paradigm.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10763-021-10177-y.

Students’ Civic Engagement Self-Efficacy Varies Across Socioscientific Issues Contexts

In STEM learning focused on science literacy, socioscientific issues instruction is often proposed as a way to bolster students’ civic engagement, however few studies in science education have explicitly examined this connection. We define civic engagement as the work of influencing legitimately public matters using means within the existing political structure. In this work we investigate students’ feelings of self-efficacy for this type of civic engagement in the context of four socioscientific issues (prairie dog conservation, food insecurity, biofuels and water conservation). This study was in the context of a large enrollment introductory science college course, where students used a structured decision-making process to examine alternative policy solutions to complex socioscientific issues. We qualitatively examined students’ response about their perception of the importance of the issue, their self-efficacy in exploring actions they could take to impact the issue, and the effectiveness of those actions. We found that students’ ideas about impact and effectiveness varied across the four different issues contexts due to students’ sense of the issues’ importance and scale. Generally, students’ ideas about actions they could take to impact the issue were narrow and rarely included political actions like voting. We also found post instruction increases in students’ civic engagement attitudes and skills related to social justice, interpersonal and problem-solving skills and political awareness. Finally, we suggest that socioscientific instruction must have an explicit connection to policy-level decisions and reveal how individual actions can influence the societal system. Our course using a structured decision-making process in the context of socioscientific issues is one model to help students make these connections.

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

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.

Commentary: Socio-scientific Issues Instruction : An interdisciplinary approach to increase relevance and systems thinking

Commentary: Socio-scientific Issues Instruction : An interdisciplinary approach to increase relevance and systems thinking

Elementary Preservice Teachers’ Challenges in Designing and Implementing Socioscientific Issues-Based Lessons

ABSTRACT Socioscientific issues (SSI) have been found to improve scientific literacy skills among K—12 students. Elementary preservice teachers (PSTs), however, are reluctant to implement SSI due to a lack of confidence with content knowledge concerning SSI and pedagogical abilities. Existing research focuses on helping PSTs overcome these concerns through microteaching, adapting existing curricula, and experiencing SSI through methods courses. While it has been noted that formal preparation is required for PSTs to feel confident in their abilities to facilitate SSI, little has been done to prepare elementary PSTs to facilitate SSI during field experiences. PST’s concerns regarding science instruction with SSI are speculative since existing empirical evidence has been collected outside the context of the classroom. In this qualitative multicase study, we explored the challenges identified by three elementary PSTs as they facilitated SSI in the classroom. Community of practice (CoP) meetings provided formal training to prepare these participants’ PSTs to facilitate SSI. Recordings of the CoP meetings, lesson plans, observations, and interviews served as data sources. Analysis revealed the following challenges as themes: student concerns, time constraints, and obstacles implementing the SSI framework. We present findings associated with each of these themes and identify implications for preparing elementary PSTs for SSI instruction.

Socio-scientific issues implementation as science learning material

This paper analyzes the implementation of socio-scientific issues (SSI) as an alternative in science learning. The content analysis approach is used for mapping implementation of social-scientific problems around the world and is created using the ArcGIS 10.5 program. The findings highlight how the distribution patterns of SSI implementation are dominated by argumentation and decision making in SSI research. Teacher professional development related to SSI implementation also showed positive results for planning, developing, and solving problems related to SSI instruction. <br /> This study contributes as literature in exploring the implementation of SSI in educational contexts because its integration in science teaching materials is unfamiliar.

Examining tensions in the socioscientific issues classroom: Students' border crossings into a new culture of science

AbstractIn the socioscientific issues (SSI) classroom, students need to cross the border between the subcultures of science (i.e., school science vs. everyday science). Traditional school contexts tend to present science as positivistic knowledge and unshakable truth unaffected by sociocultural factors. In contrast, everyday science, including SSI, is more nuanced, context‐based, socially and culturally embedded. Thus, learning in an SSI classroom requires students to make additional efforts to successfully navigate between the subcultures of science. The expected norms located within these two educational contexts can create academic and sociocultural tensions for students. It is therefore necessary to explore the tensions caused these differential norms in order to successfully implement SSI. Through the lens of cultural‐historical activity theory, we attempted to identify possible tensions that originate by implementing SSI instruction in a setting where teachers and students are accustomed to traditional lecture‐based classroom instruction. One hundred thirty ninth graders at a public middle school located in Seoul, South Korea, participated in SSI programs on genetic modification technology during seven class periods over three to 4 weeks. Data was collected by classroom observation, audio‐taping while students participated in various types of discourse, and semistructured interviews. We identified four noteworthy phenomena including intolerance of uncertainty, scientism, a sense of rivalry, and reaching an expedient and easy consensus. By revealing and understanding these tensions and phenomena, we aim to help inform teachers (and teacher educators) recognize instructional clues that can change not only students' epistemological views and attitudes toward science and science classes, but also better navigate the norms of classroom culture.

Trade-Offs in Using Mobile Tools to Promote Scientific Action with Socioscientific Issues

In this study, we build on an emerging trend in socioscientific issues (SSI) education to support action through the use of personally relevant digital tools. We investigate the design of curriculum that integrates SSIs with the design and programming of mobile apps using a design-based research methodology. Through the series of design iterations, we highlight important tradeoffs in design choices that can potentially impact the depth of students’ learning of SSIs and how students take action. These considerations include the sequencing of programming versus SSI instruction, enabling or restricting student choice of SSI topics, mandating collaboration on app development, and emphases on packaged computational components versus computational concepts. We conclude with several design suggestions to maximize efforts to promote scientific action through app construction and SSI education.

Using Socioscientific Issues to Enhance Students’ Emotional Competence

The premise of our study is that emotional competence (EC) serves as a foundational contributor to the achievement of science education goals in the context of socioscientific issues (SSIs). EC is a set of abilities necessary to accomplish adaptive goals in emotionally arousing situations. We contend that the development of EC is conducive to learning and character development in the SSI context. Therefore, we set out to develop and implement an EC intervention SSI program (called EC-SSI) and to verify the program’s effect on students’ EC, and “character and values.” We developed a nine-lesson program using two SSI scenarios: the Coltan mining problem and a designer baby dilemma. We collected data using questionnaires and student worksheets from 26 tenth graders and applied a mixed method approach to data gathering and analysis. We found that the program significantly improved students’ EC and “character and values.” From these results, we conclude that instructional strategies to improve students’ EC can be applied in SSI instruction and can positively affect student’s empathy and emotion regulation. We suggested that SSIs can provide an appropriate context for the improvement of students’ EC in science education and educators consider EC training integration at appropriate stages of science learning. We also recommend follow-up research to examine how students’ EC development impacts their SSI decision-making.

Exploring the Complexity of Students’ Scientific Explanations and Associated Nature of Science Views Within a Place-Based Socioscientific Issue Context

In addition to considering sociocultural, political, economic, and ethical factors (to name a few), effectively engaging socioscientific issues (SSI) requires that students understand and apply scientific explanations and the nature of science (NOS). Promoting such understandings can be achieved through immersing students in authentic real-world contexts where the SSI impacts occur and teaching those students about how scientists comprehend, research, and debate those SSI. This triangulated mixed-methods investigation explored how 60 secondary students’ trophic cascade explanations changed through their experiencing place-based SSI instruction focused on the Yellowstone wolf reintroduction, including scientists’ work and debates regarding that issue. Furthermore, this investigation determined the association between the students’ post place-based SSI instruction trophic cascade explanations and NOS views. Findings from this investigation demonstrate that through the place-based SSI instruction students’ trophic cascade explanations became significantly more accurate and complex and included more ecological causal mechanisms. Also, significant and moderate to moderately large correlations were found between the accuracy and contextualization of students’ post place-based SSI instruction NOS views and the complexity of their trophic cascade explanations. Empirical substantiation of the association between the complexity of students’ scientific explanations and their NOS views responds to an understudied area in the science education research. It also encourages the consideration of several implications, drawn from this investigation’s findings and others’ prior work, which include the need for NOS to be forefront alongside and in connection with science content in curricular standards and through instruction focused on relevant and authentic place-based SSI.

Teaching Practices for Enactment of Socio-scientific Issues Instruction: an Instrumental Case Study of an Experienced Biology Teacher

The identification of high-leverage teaching practices that can be improved through targeted practice should contribute to the enhancement of teachers’ facilitation of instruction and improve student learning outcomes. Researchers have begun to identify subject-specific teaching practices that are expected to enhance science teaching specifically. However, it is not clear what teaching practices look like in classrooms engaging students in learning science through socio-scientific issues. In this instrumental case study, we set out to identify those practices that an experienced secondary biology teacher employed during her successful enactment of socio-scientific issues (SSI) instruction about antibiotic resistance. Using both deductive codes from the literature and inductive coding, we analyzed nine 90-min video-taped lessons that comprised the unit. We identified science teaching practices that were particularly important for her enactment, as well as SSI-specific teaching practices not previously identified in the teaching practices literature, which included contextualizing teaching and learning in the issue, challenging students to analyze the issue from multiple perspectives, and urging students to employ skepticism when analyzing potentially biased information regarding the issue. These findings suggest that the manner in which teachers are currently being prepared is likely lacking in terms of helping teachers develop a full suite of teaching practices that contribute to the successful enactment of SSI instruction. Further research directed at how ideal SSI instruction is achieved and identifying those practices that are requisite to doing so is recommended.

Students’ Emotive Reasoning Through Place-Based Environmental Socioscientific Issues

Engaging environmental socioscientific issues (SSI) requires navigating diverse positions regarding people and nature. This qualitative investigation determined how 24 undergraduates experiencing place-based SSI instruction in the Greater Yellowstone Area (includes a national park and its surrounding areas in the western USA) expressed emotive reasoning about people and nature impacted by those SSI. The students’ emotive reasoning ranged from apathy, passive care, and moderated concern to empathetic dissonance—an intense concern for peoples’ and nature’s well-being and SSI resolution. Deeper analyses revealed that the students expressed moderated concern differently toward people and nature when engaging in environmental SSI through value judgments, claiming helplessness, and diffusing responsibility to others. The students also expressed four forms of empathetic dissonance toward people and nature impacted by SSI including deep compassion for those experiencing SSI hardships, guilt for not resolving SSI, anger toward those that are perceived to cause SSI, and righteous indignation when the moral principles of equity and justice were violated because of SSI impacts. The students’ responses included significantly more instances of moderated concern and empathetic dissonance toward people and nature after the place-based SSI instruction. Pedagogical implications include how to instruct SSI in authentic place-based settings that encourage emotive reasoning necessary for environmental SSI engagement.

Flipped Learning in Socioscientific Issues Instruction: Its Impact on Middle School Students’ Key Competencies and Character Development as Citizens

Flipped Learning in Socioscientific Issues Instruction: Its Impact on Middle School Students’ Key Competencies and Character Development as Citizens

Students' environmental NOS views, compassion, intent, and action: Impact of place‐based socioscientific issues instruction

AbstractPreparing students to achieve the lofty goal of functional scientific literacy entails addressing the normative and non‐normative facets of socioscientific issues (SSI) such as scientific processes, the nature of science (NOS) and diverse sociocultural perspectives. SSI instructional approaches have demonstrated some efficacy for promoting students' NOS views, compassion for others, and decision making. However, extant investigations appear to neglect fully engaging students through authentic SSI in several ways. These include: (i) providing SSI instruction through classroom approaches that are divorced from students' lived experiences; (ii) demonstrating a contextual misalignment between SSI and NOS (particularly evident in NOS assessments); and (iii) framing decision making and position taking analogously—with the latter being an unreliable indicator of how people truly act. The significance of the convergent parallel mixed‐methods investigation reported here is how it responds to these shortcomings through exploring how place‐based SSI instruction focused on the contentious environmental issue of wolf reintroduction in the Greater Yellowstone Area impacted sixty secondary students' NOS views, compassion toward those impacted by contentious environmental issues, and pro‐environmental intent. Moreover, this investigation explores how those perspectives associate with the students' pro‐environmental action of donating to a Yellowstone environmental organization. Results demonstrate that the students' NOS views became significantly more accurate and contextualized, with moderate to large effect, through the place‐based SSI instruction. Through that instruction, the students also exhibited significant gains in their compassion for nature and people impacted by contentious environmental issues and pro‐environmental intent. Further analyses showed that donating students developed and demonstrated significantly more robust and contextualized NOS views, compassion for people and nature impacted by contentious environmental issues, and pro‐environmental intent than their nondonating counterparts. Pedagogical implications include how place‐based learning in authentic settings could better prepare students to understand NOS, become socioculturally aware, and engage SSI across a variety of contexts.

Enhancing Student Key Competencies through Socioscientific Issues Instruction

Enhancing Student Key Competencies through Socioscientific Issues Instruction