Explicit Nature of Science and Argumentation Instruction in the Context of Socioscientific Issues: An effect on student learning and transfer

The purpose of the study was two-fold: to (a) investigate the influence of explicit nature of science (NOS) and explicit argumentation instruction in the context of a socioscientific issue on the argumentation skills and NOS understandings of students, and (b) explore the transfer of students' NOS understandings and argumentation skills learned in one socioscientific context into other similar contexts (familiar and unfamiliar). Participants were a total of 121 seventh grade students from two schools. The treatment involved an eight-week unit about the water usage and safety, which was taught by two teachers for two intact groups (Treatments I and II). Explicit NOS instruction was integrated for all groups. However, only the Treatment I groups had the additional explicit argumentation instruction. Participants were pre- and post-tested using an open-ended questionnaire and interviews about two socioscientific issues to assess their learning and transfer of argumentation skills and NOS understandings. Results showed improvements in the learning of argumentation practice and NOS understandings for Treatment I group participants. Similarly, there were improvements in the learning and transfer of NOS understandings for Treatment II group participants with only some improvements for the argumentation practice. Further, some of the Treatment I group participants made connections to argumentation when explicating their NOS understandings by the end of the study. Findings were discussed in light of classroom practice that utilizes an explicit approach, contextual approach, as well as an approach that integrates NOS and argumentation simultaneously.     

Socioscientific Issues as a Vehicle for Promoting Character and Values for Global Citizens

Our guiding presupposition in this study was that socioscientific issues (SSI) instruction, given the humanistic features that comprise this type of instruction, could play a role as a vehicle for cultivating character and values as global citizens. Our main objective was to observe how and to what extent SSI instruction might contribute to this. In order to achieve this aim, we implemented a SSI program on genetic modification technology for 132 ninth-grade students over 3–4 weeks and identified its educational effects using a mixed method approach. Data sources included student responses to questionnaire items that measure the students' character and values, records of student discussions, and semi-structured interviews with the students and their teachers. Results indicated that the students became more sensitive to moral and ethical aspects of scientific and technological development and compassionate to diverse people who are either alienated by the benefits of advanced technology or who are vulnerable to the dangers of its unintended effects. In addition, the students felt more responsible for the future resolution of the genetic SSI. However, the students struggled to demonstrate willingness and efficacy to participate within broader communities that entailed action toward SSI resolution.     

Socioscientific Issues and Multidisciplinarity in School Science Textbooks

The inclusion of socioscientific issues (SSIs) in the science curriculum is a well-established trend internationally. Apart from claims about its innate value, one of the rationales for this approach is its potential for helping to counter declining interest and participation. SSIs involve the use of science and are of interest to society, also raising ethical and moral dilemmas. Introducing such problems presents a significant and usually cross-disciplinary challenge to curriculum developers and teachers. The aim of this paper is to examine how this challenge has been met when judged against contemporary views of the issues concerned. It first explores how SSIs have been interpreted in an important and innovative science course for students aged 14–16 in England, entitled Twenty First Century Science. This paper analyses the Twenty First Century Science textbooks, focusing in detail on two SSIs, reproductive genetic technology and climate change. For each of these issues, the key ideas present in the social science literature surrounding the problems are outlined. This review is then used as an analytical framework to examine how the issues are presented in the textbooks. It is argued in this paper that the perspectives the textbooks take on these issues largely do not include perspectives from social science disciplines. It goes on to suggest that the development of future SSI-based curricula needs to take account of these wider, often interdisciplinary, perspectives.     

A Look into Students’ Retention of Acquired Nature of Science Understandings

Having the learning and retention of science content and skills as a goal of scientific literacy, it is significant to study the issue of retention as it relates to teaching and learning about nature of science (NOS). Then, the purpose of this study was to investigate the development of NOS understandings of students, and the retention of these understandings four months after being acquired through explicit reflective instruction in relation to two contexts. Participants were 24 tenth-grade students at a private high school in a city in the Middle East. Explicit NOS instruction was addressed within a six-week unit about genetic engineering. Three NOS aspects were integrated and dispersed across the unit. A questionnaire, together with semi-structured interviews, was administered as pre-, post-, and delayed post-test to assess the retention of participants’ NOS understandings. The questionnaire had two open-ended scenarios addressing controversial socioscientific issues about genetically modified food and water fluoridation. Results showed that most students improved their naïve understandings of NOS in relation to the two contexts following the six-week unit with the explicit NOS instruction. However, these newly acquired NOS understandings were not retained by all students four months after instruction. Many of the students reverted back to their earlier naïve understandings. Conclusions about the factors facilitating the process of retention as the orientation to meaningful learning and the prolonged exposure to the domain were discussed in relation to practical implications in the classroom.     

Advancing reflective judgment through Socioscientific Issues

The purpose of this investigation was to explore possible relationships between Socioscientific Issues instruction and students' development of reflective judgment. The usefulness of the Reflective Judgment Model as a tool for assessing the value of SSI is established in the parallels that can be drawn between them. Both involve ill‐structured problems requiring evidence‐based reasoning subject to differing interpretations by students, and both require examination, analysis and the blending of scientific and normative evidence, as students use that evidence to support a reasoned position. Results demonstrated both qualitative evidence revealing more sophisticated and nuanced epistemological stances toward higher stages of reflective judgment, as well as statistically significant gains within treatment groups with a moderately large effect size. Theoretical implications for advancing students' epistemological beliefs about evidence‐based argumentation and pedagogical implications for rethinking how to connect science with topics that are fundamentally meaningful to students are discussed. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 46: 74–101, 2009     

Transfer of Nature of Science Understandings into Similar Contexts: Promises and Possibilities of an Explicit Reflective Approach

The purpose of this study was to (a) investigate the effectiveness of explicit nature of science (NOS) instruction in the context of controversial socioscientific issues and (b) explore whether the transfer of acquired NOS understandings, which were explicitly taught in the context of one socioscientific context, into other similar contexts (familiar and unfamiliar) was possible. Participants were 10th grade students in two intact sections at one high school. The treatment involved teaching a six-week unit about genetic engineering. For one group (non-NOS group), there was no explicit instruction about NOS. For the other group (NOS group), explicit instruction about three NOS aspects (subjective, empirical, and tentative) was dispersed across the genetic engineering unit. A questionnaire including two open-ended scenarios, in conjunction with semi-structured interviews, was used to assess the change in participants’ understandings of NOS and their ability to transfer their acquired understandings into similar contexts. The first scenario involved a familiar context about genetically modified food and the second one focused on an unfamiliar context about water fluoridation. Results showed no improvement in NOS understandings of participants in the non-NOS group in relation to the familiar and unfamiliar contexts. On the other hand, there was a general improvement in the NOS understandings of participants in the NOS group in relation to both the familiar and unfamiliar contexts. Implications about the transfer of participants’ acquired NOS understandings on the basis of the distance between the context of learning and that of application are highlighted and discussed in link with the classroom learning environment.     

Socioscientific issues in science education: labels, reasoning, and transfer

This paper provides a critical analysis of some of the issues raised in Simonneaux and Simonneaux’s analysis of socioscientific reasoning among a group of university level students negotiating three socioscientific issues. I first discuss the labels used to reference approaches in science education that prioritize socially relevant issues and the science related to these issues. I draw distinctions between approaches labeled science-technology-society (STS), the socioscientific issues framework, and les questions socialement vives (socially acute questions), which Simonneaux and Simonneaux introduce. Next, I discuss ways in which Simonneaux and Simonneaux’s use socioscientific reasoning as an analytic construct varies with respect to its initial conceptualization. The primary distinctions include linguistic inconsistencies and the conceptual differences these language choices confer, expansion of the construct to subsume a broader range of practices, and issues related to unit of analysis (i.e., applying socioscientific reasoning as an analytic resource for assessing individual practice vs. group patterns). Finally, the issue of transfer of socioscientific reasoning is addressed. When considering the extent to which and how students leverage experiences and practice relative to the exploration of one socioscientific issue to inform their negotiation of another, I suggest that researchers and practitioners consider the distinction between the content of arguments advanced and underlying reasoning patterns. The tension between embedding science in meaningful, specific contexts and promoting forms of scientific literacy applicable to diverse, socially-relevant issues emerges as an important point of emphasis for educators interested in the socioscientific issues (or socially acute questions) movement.

Students’ Ontological Security and Agency in Science Education—An Example from Reasoning about the Use of Gene Technology

This paper reports on a study of how students' reasoning about socioscientific issues is framed by three dynamics: societal structures, agency and how trust and security issues are handled. Examples from gene technology were used as the forum for interviews with 13 Swedish high-school students (year 11, age 17–18). A grid based on modalities from the societal structures described by Giddens was used to structure the analysis. The results illustrate how the participating students used both modalities for ‘Legitimation’ and ‘Domination’ to justify positions that accept or reject new technology. The analysis also showed how norms and knowledge can be used to justify opposing positions in relation to building trust in science and technology, or in democratic decisions expected to favour personal norms. Here, students accepted or rejected the authority of experts based on perceptions of the knowledge base that the authority was seen to be anchored in. Difficulty in discerning between material risks (reduced safety) and immaterial risks (loss of norms) was also found. These outcomes are used to draw attention to the educational challenges associated with students' using knowledge claims (Domination) to support norms (Legitimation) and how this is related to the development of a sense of agency in terms of sharing norms with experts or with laymen.     

The Interface of Opinion,Understanding and Evaluation While Learning About a Socioscientific Issue

Scientific literacy is an important goal for science education, especially within controversial socioscientific issues. In this study, we analysed 143 students' research reports about stem cell research (SCR) for how they addressed specific source evaluation criteria provided within the assignment. We investigated students' opinions about SCR, how they used the evaluation criteria to evaluate online sources and whether the evaluation criteria and/or the specific sources influenced their opinion and/or understanding of SCR. We found that most of the students supported some form of SCR and reported that their sources were credible and contained more factual information than opinions. Students critiqued the language of the authors, as well as status in their respective fields, along with the content within each source. Additionally, students reported that their sources influenced their content knowledge, but had little influence regarding their SCR opinions. Through this work, we present a new working model and suggest the need for additional research about the understudied interface of opinion, understanding and evaluation within the context of important socioscientific issues. Students' opinions and content knowledge, located at the model's centre, influence and are influenced by the research topic, the sources used, the evaluation criteria and the evaluation of the sources that students use to provide evidence for claims.     

A Reconstructed Vision of Environmental Science Literacy: The case of Qatar

The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) develop a conceptual framework for environmental science literacy; and consequently (b) examine the potential of science standards/curricula to prepare environmentally literate citizens. The framework comprised four pillars: science content knowledge, scientific inquiry, nature of science (NOS), and socioscientific issues (SSI). A conceptual understanding of these pillars as interconnected was presented and justified. Then the developed framework was used to examine the potential of the Qatari science standards to prepare environmentally literate citizens. Results showed that the secondary Qatari science standards generally take up the pillars of science content and scientific inquiry in an explicit manner. The NOS pillar is rarely addressed, while the SSI pillar is not addressed in the objectives and activities in a way that aligns with the heavy emphasis given in the overall aims. Moreover, the connections among pillars are mostly manifested within the activities and between the science content and scientific inquiry. The objectives and activities targeting the environment were less frequent among the four pillars across the Qatari standards. Again, the connections related to the environment were less frequent in conformity with the limited environmental objectives and activities. Implications from this study relate to the need for the distribution of the four pillars across the standards as well as the presentation of the different pillars as interconnected.     

Investigating Socioscientific Issues via Scientific Habits of Mind: Development and validation of the Scientific Habits of Mind Survey

In this paper, we describe the Scientific Habits of Mind Survey (SHOMS) developed to explore public, science teachers’, and scientists’ understanding of habits of mind (HoM). The instrument contained 59 items, and captures the seven SHOM identified by Gauld. The SHOM was validated by administration to two cohorts of pre-service science teachers: primary science teachers with little science background or interest (n?=?145), and secondary school science teachers (who also were science graduates) with stronger science knowledge (n?=?145). Face validity was confirmed by the use of a panel of experts and a pilot study employing participants similar in demographics to the intended sample. To confirm convergent and discriminant validity, confirmatory factor analysis and evaluation of the reliability were calculated. Statistical data and other data gathered from interviews suggest that the SHOMS will prove to be a useful tool for educators and researchers who wish to investigate HoM for a variety of participants.     

Stability and Lability in Science Interest from Middle Schools to the Age of Science Choices (14 + )

Summaries

English

In parts of England and Wales, middle schools have been introduced for pupils of eight to 12 or nine to 13 years of age. From these they enter secondary schools whose general age of entry is 11. It is feared that the teaching of science in middle schools is inadequate and variable. This research has followed the science interests of pupils aged from 12 to 14 and investigated the factors that affect them by means of three questionnaires administered at yearly intervals.

The first questionnaire was administered to almost 600 boys and girls mainly to explore their recollections of the science activities they had experienced or not done in the 52 middle schools from which they came. Their liking for science was also measured and each of the activities done or not done was correlated with it. There were activities which correlated positively and negatively with liking for middle‐school science. There were also sex differences, with boys showing greater interest in ‘physical science’ activities and girls in biological ones. The most remarkable finding was that for girls the higher correlating activities were not merely biological but botanical and they were deterred by some activities with animals.

The second questionnaire after one year in the secondary schools, i.e. at 13 + , monitored the liking for chemistry, physics and biology taken by about 450 pupils. The third questionnaire was given at 14+ when these pupils had chosen to continue or abandon the further study of the three sciences. All the variables from the three questionnaires were then correlated with these science choices. Although the general influence of liking for middle‐school science had by then disappeared, certain specific middle‐school science activities still correlated significantly with science choices. The correlates of chemistry and physics choice were not exclusively physical science but included biological activities in which some measurement was involved, for example plant growth. There were sex differences. Previous activities with animals was detrimental to girls’ biology choices.

A range of other factors had, however, altered pupils’ liking for sciences over the two years in the secondary school: effects of teachers, perceptions of difficulty (especially in the case of girls’ physcial science) and liking for practical work. About a third of the pupils had not made up their minds about what subjects they wanted to study indicating that such an early age of choice is undesirable.     

The Nature of Science in Science Curricula: Methods and concepts of analysis

The article shows methods and concepts of analysis of the nature of science in science curricula through an exemplary study made in Portugal. The study analyses the extent to which the message transmitted by the Natural Science curriculum for Portuguese middle school considers the nature of science. It is epistemologically and sociologically grounded with particular emphasis on Bernstein's theory of pedagogic discourse and Ziman's conceptualization of science construction. The study used a mixed methodology and followed a dialectical process between the theoretical and the empirical. The results show that the nature of science has a low status in the curriculum with the exception of the external sociological dimension of science. Intra-disciplinary relations between scientific and metascientific knowledge are mostly absent. Recontextualization processes occurred between the two main parts of the curriculum. These results are discussed and their consequences in terms of scientific learning are explored. The mode of analysis used in the study has the potential of highlighting the level of a science curriculum, in terms of specific aspects of the nature of science.     

Girls and physics: teaching and learning strategies tested by classroom interventions in grade 11

In this quasi-experimental study various strategies are developed and empirically tested for an approach to physics instruction that should improve girls' and boys' attitudes toward and achievements in physics. Strategies include opportunities to integrate different pre-existing knowledge and the variation of teaching methods to enhance co-operation and communication in the classroom. The core of this study is an intervention in 31 classes of public schools in Switzerland. The intervention, one unit in optics and one in motion (velocity/acceleration), includes the first 40 lessons of the first physics course that all students have to attend at the upper secondary level. Data sources are various student and teacher questionnaires, tests and semi-structured interviews with teachers. Results of the entrance and final survey are presented. The focus will be on some of the applied strategies. Implications for the teaching and learning of physics and for teacher education are discussed.     

The Influence of Guided Inquiry and Explicit Instruction on K–6 Teachers’ Views of Nature of Science

This study assessed the influence of guided inquiry and explicit reflective instruction on K-6 teachers’ views of nature of science (NOS). Using the Views of Nature of Science Elementary School Version 2 (VNOS-D2), and associated interviews we tracked the changes in NOS views of teacher participants prior to and following a summer professional development program. The teachers participated in guided inquiry to improve physics knowledge, and explicit-reflective NOS activities to improve their views of NOS. Videotaped records of the workshop ensured that explicit reflective NOS instruction took place in conjunction with physics inquiry instruction. Analysis indicated that teachers improved their NOS views by the conclusion of the institute Implications for providing professional development combining inquiry and NOS instruction are made.     

Comparing Models of Nature of Science Dimensionality Based on the Next Generation Science Standards

Instruments measuring understanding of the nature of science (NOS) are required if educational institutions intend to use benchmarks or examine the effects of interventions targeting students’ NOS development. Compared to other constructs, NOS understanding is complex, having been the subject of debate among scholars in both its substance and its dimensionality. This complexity invites challenges in defining what is to be measured. Drawing from the perspective that policy reform documents provide pragmatic consensus-based definitions of NOS, this study investigated how well the dimensionality described in the NOS component of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) framework matched the empirical structure of data collected from a set of secondary-school students’ responses to an NOS instrument comprising multiple-choice and Likert-scale items. Using multidimensional item response modeling to compare structures of NOS dimensionality, we found that treating NOS as comprising multiple dimensions—as defined by the themes in the NGSS NOS framework—resulted in a better fitting model than when treating NOS as a single dimension. The multidimensional model also had fewer poorly functioning items and revealed NOS profiles that otherwise would have been masked in a model treating NOS as a single dimension. These results provide support for the NOS NGSS framework and contribute to the ongoing discussion about the dimensionality of NOS.     

Developing Children's Views of the Nature of Science Through Role Play

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of using role play (portraying a scientist's life story) on the children's views of the nature of science (NOS). The study was carried out at the Children's University of Trakya in Turkey during the summer of 2010. The participants consisted of 18 children, aged 10–11. They met for 10 days for approximately 3 h per day. All children completed the pre- and post-tests including 16 open-ended questions in order to reveal changes in their views of the NOS prior to and at the completion of the role-play activities. The results revealed that the children had more informed views of the target NOS aspects in comparison with their views prior to the role-play activities. A large majority of the children (around 80–85%) started out with naive conceptions of the target NOS aspects. Following the role-play activities portraying scientists’ lives, there was a 40–45% positive change in children's views of the tentative, empirical and creative/imaginative aspect of the NOS, and a 50–60% positive change in their views regarding the subjective/theory-laden and social–cultural embeddedness of science. The most substantial change occurred in their views concerning scientific method, with a shift of 72%. The percentage of informed views on images of scientists showed diversity. Overall results indicate that role-play/drama-oriented activities portraying scientist's life stories could be used as one of the exciting, informative and constructive ways of developing understanding of the NOS among children.     

Addressing the Dynamics of Science in Curricular Reform for Scientific Literacy: The case of genomics

Science education reform must anticipate the scientific literacy required by the next generation of citizens. Particularly, this counts for rapidly emerging and evolving scientific disciplines such as genomics. Taking this discipline as a case, such anticipation is becoming increasingly problematic in today’s knowledge societies in which the dynamics of the natural sciences is unprecedented. This raises the question of how scientific literacy can be defined in order to appropriate the dynamics of natural sciences such as genomics. Drawing on a contemporary sociocultural perspective on the dynamics of science, the science education research literature is briefly reviewed in this respect. It is argued that scientific literacy captures the dynamics of science once defined as an emergent feature of collective activity. This requires a form of science education to which the learners’ agency is central. The implications of this thesis will be discussed in regard to the case of embedding genomics in science curricula.     

Socio-Scientific Issues in Health Contexts: Treading a rugged terrain

The science–technology–society agenda has evolved over time to meet emerging educational aims in the light of changes in society and the environment. There is increasing emphasis on students' decision-making on socio-scientific issues (SSIs) not only to highlight the intricate relationships between science, technology, society, and the environment, but also to allow students to incorporate multiple viewpoints into the development of critical reasoning and responsible citizenship. Most research emphases have been on the rationality of reasoning rather than on the internal psychological context that underpins reasoning. This paper explores how these various aspects of reasoning interact in decision-making on SSIs in health contexts through case studies of recent issues in this field. The case studies reveal the negotiation of multiple influences in addressing SSIs in health contexts and the potential interactions between the psychological processes of individuals, science, and sociocultural perspectives. A tentative model to address these interactions emerges from this explorative study and has implications for the use of health-related issues in promoting SSI education.