This paper describes a study designed to investigate whether fiction can help students to develop their opinions on socio-scientific issues. The findings suggest that fictional accounts can be effective, but the study did not investigate the quality of the reasoning underlying the opinions, nor their longevity.
In this study, the authors describe a conceptual framework addressing culturally based ways of knowing, and provide a brief description of their efforts to design a community-based summer science program with a Native American tribe using this framework. To address the call to attract culturally diverse students to STEM fields, the authors advocate supporting students in their navigation of multiple and perhaps conflicting epistemologies, and using the student community as resources to be built upon, rather than pushing them toward replacing their personal epistemologies with canonical
Socioscientific issues bridge science and society. As such, they are open to multiple viewpoints and inherently associated with morality. This paper presents the findings from a year-long study designed to enhance students’ moral sensitivity so that they are better able to recognise and negotiate the moral arguments embedded with socioscientific issues (SSIs).
In this seminal paper from 2001, the researcher posits sociocultural perspectives as a useful theoretical and methodological lens for examining science education. The paper examines the types of questions that are asked when applying a sociocultural lens to the science classroom and usefully references several different bodies of work within the sociocultural tradition. The research paper discusses the ways in which non-sociocultural perspectives have positioned science and the processes of learning science in ways that privilege dispassionate rationality in a way that may not be easily
This paper describes a Saturday science program for K-2 students designed to enhance their understanding of the nature of science. Teaching strategies were used to explicitly address all the elements of NOS—the role of empirical data, the distinction between observation and inference, the creative processes of science, the subjective (theory-laden) nature of research, and the tentative (though robust) NOS knowledge.
This paper contributes to a growing body of literature examining ways of supporting teaching and learning of socio-scientific issues (SSIs). Comparing experiences in two schools—one with a monoethnic student population, the other multiethnic—the study finds that both groups of students struggle with meaningful engagement in SSIs.
Focusing on where people find information about issues relevant to civic society, the author of this paper concludes that, in contrast to the Internet and related information technologies, informal science institutions are less impactful on civic science literacy. The implications of his findings are that in the Internet era an informal science institution's in-house presentation of intriguing phenomena may not be sufficient to supporting an engaged scientifically literate citizenry.
Learning how to communicate and engage in scientific discourse has become a significant goal of science education. Argumentation, or the practice of persuasion using evidence, is identified as a core epistemic practice of science and this study aims to identify some of the essential characteristics and skills students need to engage in scientific argumentation. For ISE professionals teaching science communication, the description and outcomes of this study encompass goals and techniques that might be applied to their own programs.
This study compares scientific practices in a research laboratory and a second grade classroom. Through conversation analysis, the author found that in both settings similar processes were followed to establish a mutual understanding about what was seen, done and concluded in a collaborative investigation. The author shows how “mutual understanding” differs from “agreement,” and suggests ways to structure science inquiry activities that can engage young children with the tentative nature of science while helping them to resolve discrepant procedures, observations or interpretations.
In this study, students who participated in science internships were found to gain a better understanding of authentic science but did not have complete representations of scientific practice. Students' communication within presentations was seen to be mediated by the audience they were presenting to and what they perceived to be important. Consequently, students reported stereotypical images of science. This paper might be of interest to ISE educators developing lab and internship programs for students.
The nature of science—not only what science involves, but also how it is understood by students—is a well-established area of research. Findings have long informed policy directives and the design of teaching and learning materials. Students’ understanding of the nature of technology, meanwhile, is less widely studied, yet such an understanding is arguably essential for active participation in a technology-rich and information-driven society. In order to examine students’ understanding of technology and thereafter to develop effective approaches to supporting engagement, educators need a
This study suggests that the assessment of students’ understanding of scientific vocabulary, concepts, and reasoning associated with the greenhouse effect may be better accomplished by observing and understanding learners’ developing language use over time. The indication of previous research that students hold tenacious misconceptions may be an artifact of the questionnaires used. The authors argue that listening to student conversations is the key to better recognize learning. This paper can help ISE educators think more deeply about how and when to assess for student understanding