Preparing Elementary Pre-Service Teachers to Teach Sosio-Scientific Issues in Cyprus

Author(s):

Maria Evagorou(presenting / submitting)Panayiotis Angelides

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

10. Teacher Education Research

Format:

Paper

Session Information

10 SES 11 B, Free Choice Experimental Orders and Socio-Scientific Issues

Paper Session

Time:

2014-09-04

17:15-18:45

Room:

B223 Sala de Aulas

Chair:

Judith Harford

Contribution

Placing the Problem and Purpose of the Study

Socio-scientific issues (SSI) are those that significant numbers of people would argue about, without necessarily reaching a conclusion or consent. Socio-scientific problems are ill-defined and value-laden, invoking aesthetic, ecological, economic, moral, educational, cultural, religious and recreational values that are constrained by missing knowledge. TThe inclusion of SSI in the curriculum offers a means of expanding both the curriculum and the range of instructional practices commonly experienced in the school science classroom. Studies in SSI so far have focused on students’ decision making (Jimenez-Aleixandre & Pereiro-Munoz, 2002), conceptual understanding, and engagement with science (Albe, 2008b). An area that is still relatively unexplored however is how teachers understand and approach everyday science and SSI in their teaching (Evagorou, 2011).

Starting from the aforementioned gap in the literature, the aim of this work is to explore whether elementary pre-service teachers can be engaged in critical discussions of everyday science through socio-scientific issues, and prepare them to teach SSI. The motivation to design and implement such a project comes from limited research and curriculum development in the area of everyday science, SSI and teacher development (Evagorou, 2011), and the fact that this area can potentially engage students with science and scientific practices (Zeidler & Sadler, 2007). More specifically, science poses political and moral dilemmas and engaging with socio-scientific issues that can enable students to understand the relevance of science to everyday life, gain insight into how people use science, and develop their capacity to be critical consumers of scientific information (Kolsto, 2001). Studies in SSI and everyday science so far have focused on students’ decision making (Ratcliffe, 1996), conceptual understanding (Zohar & Nemet, 2002), and engagement with science (Albe, 2008a) but there is minimal research in the area of teacher education and teaching the connections of science to everyday life through the use of SSI (Venville & Dawson, 2010). Published studies have shown that teachers do not make the connection between science and everyday life since they find it difficult to coordinate between scientific data and the social aspects of the problem which bring uncertainty into the discussions (Zeidler, Sadler, Simmons, & Howes, 2005). Based on this gap in the literature we (1) designed a framework to address teachers’ difficulties when teaching everyday science and SSI and (2) designed curriculum materials that will focus on empowering teachers to understand the connections of science to everyday life and the implications of their decisions.

Even though SSI are an important aspect of science, European educational systems have yet to place an emphasis on the fact that we are facing common scientific and socio-scientific issues that need to be understood systemically (as systems interacting within and across countries) in order to be able to make informed decisions. Hence an additional motivation for this project is to design and implement curriculum materials to engage pre-service teachers (and thereafter their students) in critical discussions of everyday scientific problems that are common across Europe, and prepare them to teach SSI in their classes providing examples of pedagogical approaches, and placing an emphasis on the European (and international) dimension of the problems. Therefore, the main purposes of this paper are to:

(a) Present the framework and three modules that were designed in order to engage pre-service teachers with socio-scientific issues,

(b) Explore whether the three modules were successful in engaging the pre-service teachers with the socio-scientific issues, and helping them to understand the complexities of the socio-scientific issues.

Method

Based on a number of studies explaining the importance of teacher training in SSI (Abd-El-Khalick, 2003; Kılınç et al., 2013; Sadler, 2009b; Zeidler, 1997), the consortium of our project designed a framework to be used as a guideline in the development of SSI modules for pre-service teachers. Specifically, each module consists of four tasks: (a) Introduction in SSI related issues, (b) Reflection on experienced SSI related issues, (c) Transferring knowledge to teaching practice by connecting SSI issues to curriculum, developing teaching and assessment materials, and (d) Research and implementation of SSI. The four tasks are designed to have an approximate duration of 3 hours each. The framework is designed based on the notion that, pedagogical content knowledge (Park, Jang, Chen, & Jung, 2010) is as important as content knowledge for teachers. Therefore the pre-service teachers need to experience the content, pedagogy and then transform it into teaching practices, but they also need to experience the difficulties of dealing with the uncertainty of the solutions in a socioscientific issue, before they are able to design their own lessons (Evagorou, 2011). Using the framework as a guideline, the consortium designed three modules based the following topics: (a) Global warming, (b) Edible insects, and (c) Various SSI topics assessment. All modules are available on our website (http://www.ssieurope.net). Specifically, the Global Warming Module was designed in order to help pre-service teachers understand the nature of SSI issues, the edible insects module was designed to support pre-service teachers to reflect on teaching strategies for SSI and develop their own lesson plan to teach the topic, and finally, the third module was designed to scaffold pre-service teachers in their efforts to assess socioscientific issues. The modules were implemented in a Science Methods class at a university in Cyprus with 13 pre-service elementary school teachers in their fourth year of study. The implementation had a duration of 2 months during which the pre-service teachers engaged with the modules. During the two months the following data were collected in order to explore whether the pre-service teachers engage successfully with the modules and gain an understanding of SSI issues: reflective diaries of the participants, pre and post self-efficacy questionnaires, video-recordings of all the sessions, all assignments (e.g. lesson plans, group activities). The data will be open-coded and compared in order to identify themes about how and whether the pre-service teachers engage with the modules and the socio-scientific issues.

Expected Outcomes

Socio-scientific issues are an integral feature of developing what Norris and Phillips (Norris & Phillips, 2003) term ‘derived scientific literacy, that is “being knowledgeable, learned, and educated in science” (p.224) since consideration of SSI requires students to make informed decisions, deal with ethical and moral issues, develop critical thinking, resolve ambiguity, and deploy scepticism and open-mindedness (Sadler & Zeidler, 2005). In our group we have worked towards designing modules that can potentially help pre-service teachers to appreciate the importance of teaching socio-scientific issues as part of their science curriculums. This is especially important in countries in which socio-scientific issues are not explicitly part of the curriculum. Our modules are designed in a way that not only do they highlight the importance of teaching socio-scientific issues, but also help pre-service teachers: (a) to experience socio-scientific issues and understand ways in which these issues can be linked to their existing curriculum (b) to understand of SSI teaching and appreciate the difficulties, (c) and to study various ways to assess socio-scientific learning. We maintain that by engaging our pre-service teachers in this process we can help them acquire both the content knowledge, and the pedagogical skills necessary to approach controversial socio-scientific issues in the science classroom. The modules are currently implemented in all the partner countries and the full versions of all modules are available on the project’s website: http://www.ssieurope.net .

References

Abd-El-Khalick, F. (2003). Socioscientific issues in pre-college science classrooms. In D. Zeidler (Ed.), The Role of Moral Reasoning on Socioscientific Issues and Discourse in Science Education (pp. 41–62). London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Albe, V. (2008a). Students’ positions and considerations of scientific evidence about a controversial socioscientific issue. Science & Education, 17, 805–827. Albe, V. (2008b). When scientific knowledge, daily life experience, epistemological and social considerations intersect: Students’ argumentation in group discussions on a socio-scientific issue. Research in Science Education, 38, 67–90. Evagorou, M. (2011). Discussing a socioscientific issue in a primary school classroom: The case of using a technology-supported environment in formal and nonformal settings. In T. Sadler (Ed.), Socio-scientific issues in the classroom (p. 133–160). Springer. Jimenez-Aleixandre, M.-P., & Pereiro-Munoz, C. (2002). Knowledge producers or knowledge consumers? Argumentation and decision making about environmental management. International Journal of Science Education, 24(11), 1171-1190 Khishfe, R. (2012). Nature of science and decision-making. International Journal of Science Education, 34(1), 67–100 Kolsto. (2001). “To trust or not to trust,..-”pupils’ ways of judging information encountered in a socio-scientific issue. International Journal of Science Education, 23(9), 877-901. Kılınç, A., Kartal, T., Eroğlu, B., Demiral, Ü., Afacan, Ö., Polat, D., Güler, M. P. D., Görgülü, Ö. (2013). Preservice science teachers’ efficacy regarding a socioscientific issue: A belief system approach. Research in Science Education, 43(6), 2455-2475 Levinson, R. (2008). Promoting the role of the personal narrative in teaching controversial socio-scientific issues. Science & Education, 17(8), 855-871. Norris, S. P., & Phillips, L. M. (2003). How literacy in its fundamental sense is central to scientific literacy. Science Education, 87(2), 224–240. Park, S., Jang, J., Chen, Y., & Jung, J. (2010). Is pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) necessary for reformed science teaching?: Evidence from an empirical study. Research in Science Education, 1–16. Pedretti, E. (2003). Teaching Science, Technology, Society and Environment (STSE) Education. In D. Zeidler (Ed.), The Role of Moral Reasoning on Socioscientific Issues and Discourse in Science Education (pp. 219–240). The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publication. Ratcliffe, M. (1996). Pupil decision-making about socio-scientific issues, within the science curriculum. International Journal of Science Education, 19(2), 167–182. Sadler, T. (2009a). Situated learning in science education: socio‐scientific issues as contexts for practice. Studies in Science Education, 45(1), 1–42.

Author Information

Maria Evagorou (presenting / submitting)

University of Nicosia

Department of Education

Nicosia

Panayiotis Angelides

University of Nicosia

Education