Education, is often perceived as having a role in contributing to societal development, in both preparing learners to conceptualise, and enabling them to address sustainability-related issues in the society (OECD, 2018; UNESCO, 2015; United Nations, 2015). In so doing, there is a need for school science education to recognise its role in seeking to resolve societal concerns, not only science-dominated concerns like climate change, or pandemic, but also other prevailing concerns within the society such as social justice or economic transformation (Erduran, 2022; Fernández et al., 2022; Waight et al., 2022). However, science conceptualisation promoted through school alone is seen as ineffective in resolving such societal concerns which deal with complexities, i.e., problems without a straight-cut solution, referred to as wicked problems (van Baalen et al., 2021).

Yet, several literature indicate a major concern with respect to over-emphasis on science disciplinary conceptualisation (Chowdhury et al., 2021; Herman et al., 2017). In line with that, such disciplinary emphasis within school science education has been critiqued, for excluding science learning from inseparable societal affiliations, or even learners’ feelings associated with the learning (Guerrero & Reiss, 2020).

Alternatives of disciplinary framework for school science learning are seen as multi-disciplinary (Perrott, 1980), inter-disciplinary (Tytler et al., 2021) and trans-disciplinary approaches (Caiman & Jakobson, 2022). These three approaches are distinguished based on the teaching of science within, across, and beyond disciplines. However, it has been argued that both multi, and inter-disciplinary approaches yet have a disciplinary emphasis, and does not emphasise the interrelationship of science with society (Alvargonzález, 2011; Daneshpour & Kwegyir-Afful, 2021).

In mitigating against such limitations of discipline-restricted approaches, trans-disciplinarity is seen as offering a societal lens for school science learning, in which the teaching of school science extends beyond the disciplinary boundaries and seeks to address societal concerns through school science learning (Hjalmarson et al., 2020). Hence, this article aims to explore trans-disciplinarity to establish the role of school science education in societal development.

However, there are three concerns associated with trans-disciplinarity in school science education:

First, the term, trans-disciplinarity lacks a sense of clarity. For example, Gero, (2017) perceives trans-disciplinary approach in a school setting as a higher level of interdisciplinarity. Hence, it is not surprising that, STEM or STEAM education is considered both as inter and trans-disciplinary approaches (Liao, 2016; Perignat & Katz-Buonincontro, 2019).

Second, trans-disciplinarity lacks a conceptualisation from science education point of view. Different approaches to literature review has been undertaken within the scope of trans-disciplinarity in arts (van Baalen et al., 2021), or education in general (Daneshpour & Kwegyir-Afful, 2022). Although Takeuchi et al., 2020 conducted a critical review on Trans-disciplinarity in STEM education, their search for literature does not include trans-disciplinarity.

And third, trans-disciplinarity lacks a conceptualisation from school science point of view. Several existing studies explores trans-disciplinary approach in higher education STEM research, for example Shipley et al. (2017), O’Neill et al. (2019) or Slavinec et al. (2019). Although literature recognises the need to promote trans-disciplinarity at a school level science education (Sengupta et al., 2019), Wu et al. (2021) point out a gap of research in school level trans-disciplinary science teaching learning.

Hence, this article aims to address the need for conceptualising trans-disciplinarity from a science education point of view, at school level, so as to attain the need for school science education to address not only students’ individual, or social development, but but also a societal development.

Research Questions:

1. what are the general trends in including trans-disciplinarity in secondary school science education?

2. what are the key attributes of a trans-disciplinarity model of science education at the school secondary level?

A systematic literature review (SLR) was undertaken in this research. The approach is amplified below: 1. Setting the scope: The scope of SLR was identified within trans-disciplinary science education in secondary school level teaching and learning. 2. Searching literature within the scope In this study, the EBSCOhost Web service was used to search articles from several electronic databases (i.e., Social Sciences Citation Index, Scopus®, ERIC, Academic Search Complete, JSTOR journals). The search was conducted on 22 November, 2022. In establishing the logical relationships between terms in the search, the Boolean search operators (AND, OR) were used (Daneshpour & Kwegyir-Afful, 2022). The keywords used for this search were: TI* (transdisciplinary OR trans-disciplinary OR transdisciplinarity OR trans-disciplinarity) AND SU* (science education OR STEM education OR STEAM education OR science teaching learning OR science pedagogy OR science instruction OR science lesson OR science literacy OR scientific literacy). From the initial search, 260 articles were identified. After applying four limiters, e.g., peer-reviewed, English language, dated from 2011 – 2022 and full-text availability, the search resulted in 92 articles, among which 89 were from academic journals. After removal of duplicates, 59 articles were selected for full-text reading and addressed against the inclusion/exclusion criteria. 3. Setting criteria for inclusion and exclusion of the literature: Table 1: Setting the criteria for inclusion and exclusion Codes Inclusion criteria I.1 Full-text content must be in English and available for access I.2 Content must include conceptualisation of trans-disciplinarity I.3 Research must be situated within science education (also considered STEM, or STEAM) Exclusion criteria E.1 Literature without a theoretical or empirical evidence is excluded E.2 Literature with different titles, but same research content, is excluded E.3 Research situated within higher level education are excluded 4. Literature selection based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria: Based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria, articles were given values of -1 and 1, in which -1 = article did not meet the inclusion or exclusion criteria, and 1 = article met inclusion and exclusion criteria. In cases, where at least one inclusion or exclusion criteria was not met, the article was excluded from the final selection. 5. Reporting of the identified literature: This SLR followed PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis) standards (Page et al., 2021).

General trends in including trans-disciplinarity in secondary school science education: a) over the period of last decade (2011-2022), there has been only a few studies which explored trans-disciplinarity within the scope of school science education (n = 16); b) the authors have identified their studies as theoretical position papers (n = 5), qualitative studies (n = 6), quantitative studies (n = 3), mixed method studies (1), and intervention study (n = 1); c) majority of the selected research (n = 10) have been conducted in the context of USA, other contexts include Australia and Germany (n = 1), Slovenia (n = 1), Canada (n = 1), Latvia (n = 1), United Kingdom and Italy (1), and Finland (n = 1) Key attributes of a trans-disciplinarity model: The findings have indicated that, the key attributes, and the sub-components of trans-disciplinarity are not commonly perceived by all the selected articles with same degree of emphasis. For example, a) the complexity with respect to the purpose of trans-disciplinarity more commonly perceived (n = 14), compared to the methodologically plural process, required for the implementation of trans-disciplinarity (n = 9). b) within trans-disciplinary approach, the liberation from disciplinary context is comparatively more mentioned (n = 13) than liberation from the school context (n = 9) c) trans-disciplinarity is seen as reflecting on both individual and societal transformation (n = 8) by same authors, however, not by all articles (n = 16). d) the inclusion of teachers and experts from different disciplines (n = 10, and n = 11 respectively) is comparatively more mentioned than the inclusion of societal partners (n = 8) e) the attribute of transcending education is the least mentioned compared to the other attributes (n = 5 mentioning emotional connotation, and n = 8 mentioning cultural or worldview) Further findings are intended to be presented during the conference. This research is funded by the EC Horizon 2020, project no. 952470 (SciCar).

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