Socio-scientific Issues in the Classroom

Socio-scientific Issues in the Classroom
Author: Troy D. Sadler
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 387
Release: 2011-05-11
Genre: Science
ISBN: 940071159X

Socio-scientific issues (SSI) are open-ended, multifaceted social issues with conceptual links to science. They are challenging to negotiate and resolve, and they create ideal contexts for bridging school science and the lived experience of students. This book presents the latest findings from the innovative practice and systematic investigation of science education in the context of socio-scientific issues. Socio-scientific Issues in the Classroom: Teaching, Learning and Research focuses on how SSI can be productively incorporated into science classrooms and what SSI-based education can accomplish regarding student learning, practices and interest. It covers numerous topics that address key themes for contemporary science education including scientific literacy, goals for science teaching and learning, situated learning as a theoretical perspective for science education, and science for citizenship. It presents a wide range of classroom-based research projects that offer new insights for SSI-based education. Authored by leading researchers from eight countries across four continents, this book is an important compendium of syntheses and insights for veteran researchers, teachers and curriculum designers eager to advance the SSI agenda.

Socioscientific Issues-Based Instruction for Scientific Literacy Development

Socioscientific Issues-Based Instruction for Scientific Literacy Development
Author: Powell, Wardell A.
Publisher: IGI Global
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2020-09-11
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1799845591

Socioscientific issues require individuals to use moral and ethical considerations to help in their evaluation of evidence and decision making, entailing controversial scientific phenomena. Such issues include genetic engineering and biotechnology. Socioscientific issues pedagogy has the potential to enhance students’ overall conceptual understanding of scientific phenomena that affect the daily lives of people across the globe. Socioscientific Issues-Based Instruction for Scientific Literacy Development is a critical scholarly publication that examines the development of a research-based integrated socioscientific issues pedagogy for use in the K-12 system, teacher education preparation, and informal education centers. The publication focuses on science education researchers and pre-service and in-service teachers’ abilities to design and implement meaningful learning opportunities for students to use rationalistic, intuitive, and emotive perspectives as they engage in information reasoning on scientific topics, such as climate change and CRISPR, that are of utmost importance. Teachers in the K-12 system and informal education settings will be able to use this text to enhance scientific literacy among their students. Instructors in teacher preparation programs will be able to use this research-based text to improve pre-service and in-service teachers’ abilities to use socioscientific issues pedagogy to enhance scientific literacy among K-12 students. Additionally, audiences including researchers, administrators, academicians, policymakers, and students will find this book beneficial for their studies.

Science Teacher Education for Responsible Citizenship

Science Teacher Education for Responsible Citizenship
Author: Maria Evagorou
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2020-03-23
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3030402290

This edited book aims to provide a global perspective on socioscientific issues (SSI), responsible citizenship and the relevance of science, with an emphasis on science teacher education. The volume, with more than twenty-five contributors from Africa, North and South America, Asia, Australasia and Europe, focuses on examples from in- and pre-service teacher training. The contributors expand on issues related to teachers’ beliefs about teaching SSI, teachers’ challenges when designing and implementing SSI-related activities, the role of professional development, both in pre- and in-service teacher training, in promoting SSI, the role of the nature of science when teaching SSI, promoting scientific practices through SSI in pre-service teaching, and the role of indigenous knowledge in SSI teaching. Finally, the book discusses new perspectives for addressing SSI in teacher education through the lens of relevance and responsible citizenship.

Innovative Approaches to Socioscientific Issues and Sustainability Education

Innovative Approaches to Socioscientific Issues and Sustainability Education
Author: Ying-Shao Hsu
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 389
Release: 2022-08-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9811918406

This book explores innovative approaches to teacher professional learning, examples of teaching enacted in classrooms, and factors affecting the promotion of quality teaching in socio-scientific issues and sustainability contexts. Since educational settings and cultures influence teaching, the different approaches and perspectives in various cross-national contexts enable us to appreciate the diversity of different countries’ practices and provide insight into seminal approaches to socio-scientific issues-based teaching internationally. The book consists of three parts: innovative professional development programs, innovative teaching approaches, and issues relating to student engagement with socio-scientific issues and sustainability education. The book targets those who can be expected to develop curriculum, enact teaching practices, and facilitate teachers’ professional development in socio-scientific issues and sustainability education.

Science Teachers' Learning

Science Teachers' Learning
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2016-01-15
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0309380189

Currently, many states are adopting the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) or are revising their own state standards in ways that reflect the NGSS. For students and schools, the implementation of any science standards rests with teachers. For those teachers, an evolving understanding about how best to teach science represents a significant transition in the way science is currently taught in most classrooms and it will require most science teachers to change how they teach. That change will require learning opportunities for teachers that reinforce and expand their knowledge of the major ideas and concepts in science, their familiarity with a range of instructional strategies, and the skills to implement those strategies in the classroom. Providing these kinds of learning opportunities in turn will require profound changes to current approaches to supporting teachers' learning across their careers, from their initial training to continuing professional development. A teacher's capability to improve students' scientific understanding is heavily influenced by the school and district in which they work, the community in which the school is located, and the larger professional communities to which they belong. Science Teachers' Learning provides guidance for schools and districts on how best to support teachers' learning and how to implement successful programs for professional development. This report makes actionable recommendations for science teachers' learning that take a broad view of what is known about science education, how and when teachers learn, and education policies that directly and indirectly shape what teachers are able to learn and teach. The challenge of developing the expertise teachers need to implement the NGSS presents an opportunity to rethink professional learning for science teachers. Science Teachers' Learning will be a valuable resource for classrooms, departments, schools, districts, and professional organizations as they move to new ways to teach science.

Science Teacher Education for Responsible Citizenship

Science Teacher Education for Responsible Citizenship
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2020
Genre: Electronic books
ISBN: 9783030402303

This edited book aims to provide a global perspective on socioscientific issues (SSI), responsible citizenship and the relevance of science, with an emphasis on science teacher education. The volume, with more than twenty-five contributors from Africa, North and South America, Asia, Australasia and Europe, focuses on examples from in- and pre-service teacher training. The contributors expand on issues related to teachers' beliefs about teaching SSI, teachers' challenges when designing and implementing SSI-related activities, the role of professional development, both in pre- and in-service teacher training, in promoting SSI, the role of the nature of science when teaching SSI, promoting scientific practices through SSI in pre-service teaching, and the role of indigenous knowledge in SSI teaching. Finally, the book discusses new perspectives for addressing SSI in teacher education through the lens of relevance and responsible citizenship.

EBOOK: SCIENCE EDUCATION FOR CITIZENSHIP

EBOOK: SCIENCE EDUCATION FOR CITIZENSHIP
Author: Mary Ratcliffe
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education (UK)
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2003-07-16
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0335227546

“This is overwhelmingly a valuable book - particularly in the context of science education in the UK. It is a book that deserves to be read more widely by science teachers, particularly those who seek not simply to extend their repertoire of teaching techniques, but who wish to place these techniques upon a sound academic footing.” Educational Review "I have greatly enjoyed reading through Science Education for Citizenship. It is extremely informative and contains much of value. We will definitely be putting it on our MA in Science Education reading list." Dr Michael Reiss, Institute of Education, University of London This innovative book explores the effective teaching and learning of issues relating to the impact of science in society. Research case studies are used to examine the advantages and problems as science teachers try new learning approaches, including ethical analysis, use of media-reports, peer-group decision-making discussions and community projects. This book: offers practical guidance in devising learning goals and suitable learning and assessment strategies helps teachers to provide students with the skills and understanding needed to address these multi-faceted issues explores the nature and place of socio-scientific issues in the curriculum and the support necessary for effective teaching Science Education for Citizenship supports science teachers, citizenship teachers and other educators as they help students to develop the skills and understanding to deal with complex everyday issues.

It's Debatable!

It's Debatable!
Author: Lewis Zeidler
Publisher: National Science Teachers Association
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9781938946004

REVERE Award Finalist, PreK-12 Learning Group, Association of American Publishers! " Functional scientific literacy requires an understanding of the nature of science and the skills necessary to think both scientifically and ethically about everyday issues." -- from the introduction to It's Debatable! This book encourages scientific literacy by showing you how to teach the understanding and thinking skills your students need to explore real-world questions like these: - Should schools charge a "tax" to discourage kids from eating unhealthy foods? - Should local governments lower speed limits to reduce traffic fatalities? - Should pharmaceutical companies be allowed to advertise prescription drugs directly to consumers? At the core of the exploration is the Socioscientific Issues Framework. The framework gives students practice in the research, analysis, and argumentation necessary to grapple with difficult questions and build scientific literacy. After introducing the concept of the framework and explaining how it aligns with the Next Generation Science Standards, the book shows you how to implement it through seven units targeted to the elementary, middle, and high school levels. You even find out how to develop your own socioscientific issues curriculum. Both practical and content-rich, It's Debatable! doesn't shy away from controversy. Instead, the authors encourage you and your students to confront just how messy the questions raised by science (and pseudoscience) can be. After all, as the authors note, " The only way for our students to be prepared for participation in societal discourse is to have practice in their school years, and what better place than the science classroom?"

Looking to the Future

Looking to the Future
Author: Derek Hodson
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 414
Release: 2011-10-25
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9460914721

In advocating an action-oriented and issues-based curriculum, this book takes the position that a major, but shamefully neglected, goal of science and technology education is to equip students with the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values to confront the complex and often ill-defined socioscientific issues they encounter in daily life as citizens in an increasingly technology-dominated world carefully, critically, confidently and responsibly. In outlining proposals for addressing socioscientific issues through a curriculum organized in terms of four increasingly sophisticated levels of consideration, the author adopts a highly critical and politicized stance towards the norms and values that underpin both scientific and technological development and contemporary scientific, engineering and medical practice, criticizes mainstream STS and STSE education for adopting a superficial, politically naïve and, hence, educationally ineffective approach to consideration of socioscientific issues, takes the view that environmental problems are social problems occasioned by the values that underpin the ways in which we choose to live, and urges teachers to encourage students to reach their own views through debate and argument about where they stand on major socioscientific issues, including the moral-ethical issues they often raise. More controversially, the author argues that if students are to become responsible and politically active citizens, the curriculum needs to provide opportunities for them to experience and learn from sociopolitical action. The relative merits of direct and indirect action are addressed, notions of learning about action, learning through action and learning from action are developed, and a case is made for compiling a user-friendly database reflecting on both successful and less successful action-oriented curriculum initiatives. Finally, the book considers some of the important teacher education issues raised by this radically new approach to teaching and learning science and technology. The book is intended primarily for teachers and student teachers of science, technology and environmental education, graduate students and researchers in education, teacher educators, curriculum developers and those responsible for educational policy. The author is Emeritus Professor of Science Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (University of Toronto), Adjunct Professor of Science Education at the University of Auckland and Visiting Professor of Science Education at the University of Hong Kong. His research interests include considerations in the history, philosophy and sociology of science and their implications for science and technology education, STSE education and the politicization of both students and teachers, science curriculum history, multicultural and antiracist education, and teacher education via action research.