A goal of science education is for students to develop scientific literacy. Scientific literacy involves the acquisition of factual scientific knowledge and the ability to assess the credibility of scientific assertation. Furthermore, students should be able to include ethical considerations. Realising this goal is complicated because it requires the development of argumentation skills, content knowledge, and an understanding of Nature of Science. Teachers struggle to apply effective strategies in the classroom. Few studies have shed light on usable, effective strategies. Therefore, the research goal is to identify features that encourage students to explore socio-scientific issues. To stimulate the development of scientific literary and support teachers, a web-based educational instrument was designed. In this study, the effects and influences of its features in the context of socio-scientific issues are investigated. The instrument provides a sequence of concept cartoons alternated with an interactive diagram. The instrument is deployed in 14 classrooms in both primary and secondary schools. In this paper, we present the educational instrument and report on its practical implementation and its constituent features. The results indicate that students show active involvement during their interaction with the instrument and reveal both the merits and challenges regarding the various features.
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Using socio-scientific issues as a learning context is an effective approach to achieve an important goal in science education, which is to enhance scientific literacy. It involves strengthening skills such as argumentation while also improving an understanding of the Nature of Science and imparting content knowledge. The present study evaluates the impact of a web-based educational instrument consisting of a unique combination of features designed to promote students’ development of skills and knowledge as well as to address the challenges faced by teachers in teaching socio-scientific issues. Participants included 423 students in secondary education. Students in the experimental condition received a three-lesson intervention with the educational instrument, and students in the control condition followed their regular science lessons. Findings indicated that the instrument proves effective in fostering learning outcomes while teachers benefit from the shift of managing classroom discussion to individual guidance of students. Applying the educational instrument in the classroom demonstrates promise in improving student engagement and their comprehension of socio-scientific issues.
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This dissertation aims to strengthen socioscientific issues (SSI) education by focusing on the resources available to students. SSI education is a type of science and citizenship education that supports students’ informed and critical engagement with social issues that have scientific or technological dimensions. This dissertation explores students’ SSI-related resources relevant to their engagement with SSI, such as their attitudes and social resources. The dissertation consists of four papers. The first is a position paper that introduces the concept of socioscientific capital and argues why it is important to pay attention to students’ resources in SSI-based teaching. The other three papers involve empirical, quantitative studies. Two questionnaires were developed that were used to investigate student differences regarding engagement with SSI: the Pupils’ Attitudes towards Socioscientific Issues (PASSI) questionnaire and the Use of Sources of Knowledge (USK) questionnaire. The final study is an exploration of the effects of SSI-based teaching on students’ attitudes toward SSI, considering socioscientific capital.
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