From “What” to “How”: Researching Students’ Meaning Making in Sustainability Issues

Author(s):

Katarina Ottander(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

30. Environmental and Sustainability Education Research (ESER)

Format:

Paper

Session Information

30 SES 02 A, Learning ESE

Paper Session

Time:

2014-09-02

15:15-16:45

Room:

B119 Sala de Aulas

Chair:

Elsa Lee

Contribution

This paper is reflecting on the process of designing a research project, my thesis, based on my experience of teaching biology and environmental science in upper secondary schools. It is a reflexive text about my research project, which started from one challenge I had as a teacher; teaching sustainability within a general science course where several students had lost or not gained legitimacy about taking part in socio-scientific discourses. The aim of this paper is to focus on the challenges of finding a suitable theoretical framework to explore these students way of taking part in socio-scientific discourses. It will explore why I had to do theoretical changes to make it possible to analyze the empirical material to fulfill the aim with the research project. The paper will also discuss consequences from the theoretical changes halfway through my thesis.

One goal in science education is that all students shall develop knowledge so they can participate in social dialogues concerning socio-scientific issues (Roberts, 2007; Sadler, 2009). One rationale for this is to work with situations that students may face as citizens where other considerations than just scientific ones have to be taken into account (Roberts, 2007). Socio-scientific issues are said to be relevant and can bridge school science and students’ lived experiences (Sadler, Barab, & Scott, 2007). It is assumed that learning within socio-scientific issues can promote democratic citizenship in science education.

Three selective teaching traditions within environmental and sustainability education have been identified in Sweden (Borg, 2011; Öhman, 2004). Forty percent of Swedish upper secondary school science teachers are teaching within the fact based tradition, sixteen percent in the normative teaching tradition and twenty-five percent are within the pluralistic tradition when teaching about sustainability (Borg, 2011). The traditional fact based science-oriented approach to environmental education has been criticized for leading to knowledge about the existence of environmental problems without addressing the social and societal perspectives of these questions (Gough, 2010; Jensen & Schnack, 1997; Scott & Gough, 2003). The normative tradition, where the aim of education is to support an environmentally friendly transformation of society, has been criticized because it could be a contradiction to an education where students learn to think for themselves (Jickling & Wals, 2008; Kopnina, 2012; McKenzie, 2012). As a response to problems associated with the fact based and normative traditions the pluralistic tradition has developed. In the pluralistic tradition environmental problems are seen as conflicts between people’s different interests and are therefore interpreted as political issues. It is seen as important that students learn to critically examine different perspectives on environmental and sustainability issues. However, in a pluralistic approach in science education, studies show that students do not bring much science into discussions about socio-scientific issues (Nielsen, 2011; Ratcliffe & Grace, 2003), and that the attention paid to canonical science content lessens when the scientific information becomes more uncertain and the context of instruction becomes more emotional (Aikenhead, 2006). Although this raises questions about what science content is and how it is identified in research.

From this background my point of departure was to investigate how students may use science when discussing issues of sustainability in small group settings. Another focus of the analyses was to study which roles science were given when the students were discussing sustainability tasks with a pluralistic design. My first approach was to focus on what the students were talking about through content analyses and from that I designed the data collection. However, the analyses did not answer my research questions and I had to rethink my theoretical framework which caused other problems. This will be discussed later on.

Method

At the time for the data collection all students in Sweden had to attend a general science course, Science Studies, in the upper secondary school in both vocational and theoretical programs. The Swedish syllabus (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2000) stated that Science Studies is an interdisciplinary subject in which scientific questions can be viewed from different perspectives. The course aim is that the students should learn scientific knowledge required to take a stand on issues that are important to the individual and the society, such as sustainable development and energy consumption. Initially a case study, where students discussed ecological footprints within the Science Studies course, was conducted in a class with both social science students and hairdresser students. A total of 24 students within six groups were involved in the study. The group discussions were audio recorded and transcribed and a content analysis was undertaken. Classroom studies have subsequently been conducted in three social science classes with different teachers. All classes were in their first year in upper secondary school and attended the course Science Studies. In this main study there were 84 students, 29 male and 55 female. The main data collections consisted of audio-recorded small-group discussions and was complemented with classroom observations. Students were audio recorded three times when they were working in small groups, discussing issues related to sustainable development. Three different tasks were designed to focus the potential dilemma between social justice and the demand and supply of natural resources. No specific areas in science were specified in the task or by the teacher. Instead, students used the science they found relevant to create meaning about the sustainability issue in their discussions. The tasks were: Earth at night, focusing on the world's energy supply, Ecological footprints, focusing on the world's resources and Do we have enough food?, focusing on the world's food supply. Every second audio recorded group discussions were transcribed verbatim. In total 34 groups were transcribed. The transcribed group discussions should be used to explore students’ use of science and the roles they give to science.

Expected Outcomes

In the first case study a content analyses was undertaken. Students’ discussions were categorized based on what they talked about, but students’ talk was interwoven and the categorisation did not show this. Analysing students’ use of knowledge expressed a view of knowledge as “solid” with right and wrong answers. Science was not captured in the analyses, although I saw that science discourses were involved in the discussions. This process made me reflect over why students’ voices were not captured in my analysis, while I noticed that they said interesting and important things. The analysis did not answer my research questions. I did theoretical shifts such as; ask questions about ‘how’ students talk instead of asking ‘what’ the talk is about and the analytical object changed from the individual to the conversation. I used discursive psychology, which purpose is to study how people strategically use interpretative repertoires to portray themselves or ‘parts of the world’ in social interaction (Edley, 2001; Potter & Wetherell, 1987). Interpretative repertoires are relatively coherent ways of talking about objects and events in the world (Edley, 2001). The approach focuses on how people construct meaning and the meaning of a word is its use in language. This focus made it possible to explore how students used their knowledge and the meaning they put into it. I undertook a large data collection in line with my first theoretical approach but ended up with an analytical framework that require close and detailed reading of transcripts. This dilemma has caused different problems when working with the analysis and forced me to make unexpected choices around my empirical material. In the paper and at the conference I want to discuss and clarify consequences of my theoretical shift in my research project.

References

Aikenhead, G. (Ed.). (2006). Science Education for Everyday Life: Evidence-Based Practice. New York: Teachers College Press. Borg, C. (2011). Utbildning för hållbar utveckling ur ett lärarperspektiv: Ämnesbundna skillnader i gymnasieskolan. Unpublished Licenciate thesis, Karlstads universitet, Karlstad. Edley, N. (2001). Analysing masculinity: Interpretative Repertoires, Ideological dilemmas and Subject Positions. In M. Wetherell, S. Taylor & S. Yates (Eds.), Discourse as data: a guide for analysis. Gough, A. (2010). Mutualism: A different agenda for environmental and science education. International Journal of Science Education, 24(11), 1201-1215. Jensen, B. B., & Schnack, K. (1997). The action competence approach in environmental education. Environmental Education Research, 3(2), 163. Jickling, B., & Wals, A. E. J. (2008). Globalization and environmental education: looking beyond sustainable development. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 40(1), 1-21. Kopnina, H. (2012). Education for sustainable development (ESD): the turn away from ‘environment’ in environmental education? Environmental Education Research, 18(5), 699-717. McKenzie, M. (2012). Education for Y'All: Global Neoliberalism and the Case for a Politics of Scale in Sustainability Education Policy. Policy Futures in Education, 10(2), 165-177. Nielsen, J. A. (2011). Co-opting Science: A preliminary study of how students invoke science in value-laden discussions. International Journal of Science Education, 34(2), 275-299. Potter, J., & Wetherell, M. (1987). Discourse and social psychology: beyond attitudes and behavior. London, Thousand Oaks, New Dehli: Sage Publications. Ratcliffe, M., & Grace, M. (2003). Science Education for citizenship. Maidenhead, Philadelphia: Open University Press. Roberts, A. D. (2007). Scientific literacy/Science literacy. In S. K. Abell & N. G. Lederman (Eds.), Handbook of research on science education (pp. 729-780). Mahwag, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Sadler, T. D. (2009). Situated Learning in Science Education: Socio-Scientific Issues as Contexts for Practice. Studies in Science Education, 45(1), 1-42. Sadler, T. D., Barab, S. A., & Scott, B. (2007). What do Students Gain by Engaging in Socioscientific Inquiry? Research in Science Education, 37(4), 371-391. Scott, W., & Gough, S. (2003). Sustainable development and learning: Framing the issues. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Swedish National Agency for Education. (2000). Kursplaner 2000. Retrieved from http://www3.skolverket.se/ki03/front.aspx?sprak=SV&ar=0607&infotyp=5&skolform=21&id=3203&extraId=. Öhman, J. (2004). Moral perspectives in selective traditions of environmental education. In P. Wickenberg, H. Axelsson, L. Fritzén, G. Helldén & J. Öhman (Eds.), Learning to change our world (pp. 33-57). Lund: Studentlitteratur.

Author Information

Katarina Ottander (presenting / submitting)

Umeå University

Department of Science and Mathematics Education

Örnsköldsvik

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