I dagens läroplan för grundskolan (Lgr 11) finns syftesbeskrivningar för de naturOrienterande (NO) ämnena som säger att eleverna ska utveckla kunskaper och redskap för att formulera och granska information och andras argument samt ta ställning i frågor som rör ämnen med naturvetenskapligt innehåll. Detta är formuleringar som speglar det man i dag anser att NO-undervisningen ska ge de elever som går ut grundskolan. I det här arbetet har elever i slutet av högstadiet fått argumentera kring användandet av genmodifierade grödor (Genetically Modified Organism, GMO). Detta är ett exempel på så kallade Samhällsfrågor med Naturvetenskapligt Innehåll (SNI) och den här typen av samhällsfrågor har lyfts fram som ett sätt att arbeta med de formuleringar som nu finns i läroplanen. Syftet med den här studien är att undersöka högstadieelevers användning av argument i en naturvetenskapligt grundad diskussion och hur användningen av SNI i undervisningen kan hjälpa elever att utveckla sin argumentationsteknik och sitt intresse för naturvetenskap. Elevernas argumentation kring frågan om GMO har analyserats utifrån en analysmodell som är utvecklad för granskning av argumentation om SNI. Den här studien har funnit att användandet av SNI fungerar väl för att testa delar av läroplanens kunskapskrav men att det kräver noga förberedelser och att övningarna är väl uppbyggda.

School is assumed to equip students with subject knowledge and contribute to their development as human beings and democratic citizens as well. In this article, the democratic dimension of the teaching assignment is brought to the fore, and an analysis tool for investigating students’ conversations on socioscientific issues that emphasises democratic aspects is presented. The DEQUAL-tool, where the acronyms stand for DEliberative QUALities, comprises both the content-related and formal aspects of the conversations, with a specific emphasis on the collective expressions of democratic qualities like questioning, consideration for others and conveying different dimensions and arguments. DEQUAL is based on an intersubjective and communicative understanding of democracy and meaning-making, and is theoretically inspired by John Dewey’s and Jürgen Habermas’ views on these matters. The development and function of DEQUAL is clarified using excerpts from upper secondary school students talking about how living in a certain place influences the greenhouse effect. By pointing out characteristics, strengths and weaknesses of students’ group-conversations, this methodological proposal can provide further guidance for an integrative understanding of the teacher’s assignment in science education.

This thesis focuses on upper secondary students’ use of resources in their supporting reasons when arguing socioscientific issues (SSIs). The skills of argumentation have been emphasized in science education during the past decades and SSIs are proven a good context for learners to enhance skills of argumentation and achieve the goal of scientific literacy. Research has shown that supporting reasons from various resources are embedded in students’ argumentation on SSIs, and also that multi-perspective involvement in reasoning is important for the quality of argumentation. To explore the reasons used by students in arguing about SSIs in this thesis, the SEE-SEP model was adopted as an analytical framework. The SEE-SEP model covers the six subject areas of sociology/culture, economy, environment/ecology, science, ethics/morality and policy, which are connected to the three aspects of knowledge, value and personal experience. Two studies covering four SSIs (global warming, GMO, nuclear power and consumption) explore how students construct arguments on one SSI topic chosen by them. In paper I, I investigated students’ use of resources in their informal argumentation and to what extent students made use of knowledge. The results showed that students used value to a larger extent (67%) than knowledge (27%). I also found that the distribution of supporting reasons generated by students varied from the different SSIs. In paper II, I explored students’ use of resources in relation to students’ study background (science majors and social-science majors) and gender. The results showed that social-science majors and females generated more numbers of reasons and also showed a larger amount of multi-disciplinary resources in their supporting reasons. From the findings of this thesis, the SEE-SEP model was established as a suitable model used to analyze students’ resources of supporting reasons while arguing about SSIs. Furthermore, the potential for applying the SEE-SEP model in teachers’ SSI-teaching and students’ SSI-learning is suggested. The implications to research and teaching are also discussed.

This study was conducted to investigate the extent to which the Life Sciences curriculum integrates green economy content, as functional green economy knowledge amongst South African citizens could address socio-economic challenges in South Africa. Primarily, document analysis of the Grade 10-12 Life Sciences Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) was conducted to determine whether green economy content was prescribed in the CAPS document and to what degree. Secondly, Grade 10 Life Sciences teachers completed questionnaires and participated in interviews to reveal their opinions on the integration of green economy content in the Life Sciences curriculum, their understanding of green economy and its implementation, as well as their opinions on the relevance of the current Life Sciences curriculum’s content for afterschool use. The research findings revealed that the Life Sciences curriculum can serve the purpose of introducing students to green economy aspects, however changes must be made to the curriculum so that functional green economy content is integrated. Currently, the curriculum does not provide guidelines for teachers on how to educate learners in such a manner that they will be able to participate in a green economy. Much of the content related to green economy topics is prescribed as extra content without the inclusion of student investigations or skill development activities. Furthermore, content on plants and human anatomy are prescribed and assessed in much greater detail than the environmental studies strand, resulting in the exclusion of much green economy related content. Findings indicate that socioscientific issues such as green economy are not linked to the environmental studies subject content, which means that daily-life application of content remains unclear to students. In addition to this, teachers revealed that they have knowledge of environmentally green practices but are unsure of how these relate to the economy. The researcher proposes that curriculum designers completely integrate green economy content into the Life Sciences CAPS document, including not only content for discussion purposes but also investigations and activities which will lead to skills development, compelling learners to modify their behaviour and seek solutions to the urgent problems faced by humanity in terms of environmental degradation and economic collapse. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2015. / Science, Mathematics and Technology Education / Unrestricted

Cette thèse s’intéresse à la possible contribution de l’étude des questions socioscientifiques (QSSs) à une Éducation Citoyenne (EC). L'EC est affichée comme l’enjeu éducatif des QSSs par la recherche en éducation aux sciences ainsi que par le curriculum du secondaire Français à travers l’enseignement des thèmes de convergence communs à plusieurs disciplines. Or le concept de citoyenneté est un concept dynamique et mouvant. En effet, le citoyen se présente dans une pluralité de profils au regard de la recherche en socio-politique et la visée d’EC n’est pas consensuelle dans le champ de recherche sur les QSSs quant au citoyen à construire. Notre travail de recherche pose alors la question de quel citoyen nous (au sens de société) voulons construire et quelle EC serait alors à privilégier. Si le projet est de construire un citoyen qui participe aux discussions et aux prises de décision en matière d’enjeux technoscientifiques dans le cadre d’une participation démocratique, orientation promue par certaines recherches sur les QSSs, alors il nous faut privilégier une EC émancipatrice et critique. C’est pourquoi, l’étude d’une QSS par le débat dans le cadre de la demande institutionnelle d’enseignement des thèmes de convergence nous a semblé une voie propice pour répondre à ce questionnement de possible contribution des QSSs à une EC critique. Nous positionnant dans cette orientation d’EC critique pour laquelle nous avons élaboré un modèle, nous avons construit une séquence pédagogique étayée par ce modèle et par le modèle de scolarisation des controverses de Albe (2007) dans une approche méthodologique des recherches « design-based ». Cette séquence est construite comme une conférence de citoyen pour des jeunes élèves de 11 à 12 ans. Ils ont alors été invités à s’exercer à une citoyenneté critique autour de recherches documentaires, d’un débat finalisé par une décision et d’ activités de formation à l’expertise documentaire, sur une question réelle d’installation de l’Internet dans leur établissement par le système Wi-Fi ou le système filaire. L’analyse des différentes données écrites ou orales a été effectuée dans le cadre analytique de notre modèle d’EC critique. Nous avons eu recours à la dimension épistémologique du modèle de Albe (2007) pour déterminer quels sont les savoirs que les élèves mobilisent lors de ce dispositif de débat. Pour déterminer comment les élèves expertisent l’information, nous avons eu recours aux travaux de Kolstø (2001) et de Klosterman et Sadler (2008). L’argumentation des élèves a été analysée suivant l’interaction argumentative développée par Plantin (1995, 2000). L’analyse de la prise de décision a été conduite en référence aux travaux de Ratcliffe (1999). Nous avons établi à travers nos analyses que les élèves mobilisent de façon importante des savoirs scolaires relatifs à la question des ondes Wi-Fi, qu’ils ont des argumentations construites, qu’ils évaluent peu les sources des documents mais qu’ils évaluent leur contenu. L’analyse de la prise de décision a montré différents niveaux de complexité dans le choix des critères. Par ailleurs, des modalités de prise de décision ont été construites et proposées par les élèves dans lesquelles les enjeux sanitaires et économiques liés à la question des ondes Wi-Fi ont été pris en compte. Notre étude montre que l’étude d’une QSS peut engager des jeunes élèves dans l’exercice d’une EC critique qui vise à construire un citoyen capable de participer aux discussions et aux prises de décisions en matière de QSSs. / This thesis focuses on a potential contribution of the study of socioscientific issues (SSIs) in school context to a Citizenship Education (CE). The CE is the declared aim of the SSI research movement. It is also the one of the French middle school curriculum, promoted through “convergence topics” teaching which are common to several academic subjects. But the concept of citizenship is a dynamic and moving concept. The socio-political research field highlights a plurality of citizen profiles. Also, regarding the citizen building, the SSI research movement is not consensual about the meaning of CE. Our research raises the question of what kind of citizen, we (according to society) want to build and what EC should be promoted. If the project is to build a citizen who participates in debate and decision-making about technoscientific issues through democratic participation, view also promoted by some researchers, then we need to focus on an emancipatory and critical CE. Therefore, the SSI study using debate through “convergence topics” teaching seems to be a good way to explore this potential contribution of the SSIs studies to a critical CE. Promoting a critical CE, for which a model has been build, we have developed a educative design, supported by this model and Albe’s model (2007) in the methodological approach of the design-based research. This design has been built such as a citizen conference for 11-12 years old students. They were asked to practice a critical citizenship through literature search, a debate finalized by a decision and an activity around the evaluation of the selected information in the web. They have to work on a real situation: the installation of an Internet connection in their school by the wireless system using waves or by the wire line system using cables. The various written or oral data were analysed in the framework of our model of critical CE. The epistemological dimension of Albe’s model (2007) was used to determine what knowledge were mobilized by the young students during the debate. To examine how students have evaluated the selected information, analytical tools were developed from Kolstø (2001) and Klosterman and Sadler (2008) researches. The student argumentation was analysed according to the argumentative interaction theory (Plantin, 1995, 2000). The decision-making analysis was conducted in reference to Ratcliffe (1999) studies. The different analyses show that students have mobilized a lot of academic knowledge related to the waves and built their argumentation. The sources of the different documents haven’t been evaluated while their content has. The decision-making analysis has shown different levels of complexity in the criteria choice. In addition, several decision-making processes have been proposed and developed by the students. The health and economical aspects related to the waves issues were considered. Our study shows that a QSS study can engage young students to express a critical EC in practice, which aims to enable citizens to participate in discussions and decisions regarding the QSSs.

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As the nature of work significantly transforms over the next several decades, engineering students today will play a major role in building and developing society. Both industry and academia position critical thinking skills and problem-solving abilities as central to the growing needs of developed and developing societies. Consequently, engineers will be paid in the future to solve complex problems. ABET (2021) standards indicate these ill-structured problems or complex engineering problems involve multiple factors outside of standard building codes or equations. Complex or socioscientific problems have no obvious solution pathway, multiple perspectives, and require a well-reasoned and argued solution. Thus, ill-structured problems emerge from situated and societal contexts in which various aspects of the context or problem space are undefined, unspecified, uncertain, or as Chen et al. (2019) describe, 'fuzzy'. Novice learners struggle with the inherent uncertainty embedded at all stages of the problem-solving process. Students need opportunities to grapple with the challenges of real-world problems, including the inherent uncertainties associated with them. In problem-solving situations learners often reject or avoid uncertainty and associated feelings of discomfort because traditional education provides few opportunities to confront these uncertainties in problem solving. Evidence suggests uncertainty becomes a productive or constructive experience when learners are forced to express, contend, grapple with, argue, and negotiate how and what they know with others. Thus, generation of uncertainty, or productive uncertainty, in problem-solving situations facilitates management of ambiguity and complexity through argumentation to, in turn, foster well-informed, confidently argued and supported solutions. The purpose of this study was to develop a framework to guide designers/instructors to facilitate learning using argumentation as a pedagogical tool to manage uncertainty. / Doctor of Philosophy / Work is changing across industries, and students today will play a major role in building the world of tomorrow by solving complex problems. Therefore, industry and education position critical thinking and problem-solving skills as crucial to developing an innovative workforce to prosper in the future. Moreso, engineers will play a major role in using critical thinking and problem-solving skills to solve complex problems. Essentially, engineers will be paid to solve these pressing problems. Complex problems, also known as socioscientific problems, are extremely uncertain - having no apparent solution, requiring multiple perspectives, and arriving at a feasible solution under constraints. Additionally, complex problems are impacted by multiple effects associated with cultural and social contexts, making these problems increasingly more 'fuzzy' or uncertain. Because uncertainty is a key part of complex problem solving, students need chances to grapple with these problems and unavoidable uncertainty, which is too often avoided. Uncertainty creates feelings of discomfort which learners seek to avoid or reduce. However, evidence indicates uncertainty can also be used productively. If students can embrace or learn to work within uncertainty, they can learn to argue, negotiate, reason, and solve problems more effectively. The act of collaboratively arguing, reasoning, sharing perspective, or negotiating (argumentation as a process) holds promise as an overarching practice which allows students to confront and manage uncertainty in problem solving. Therefore, this study aimed to position argumentation as a teaching tool to foster and manage productive moments of uncertainty while solving complex problems. The study resulted in a taxonomy of uncertainty sources and management strategies, and cognitive guidelines for designers and educators to use argumentation as a process to promote and manage uncertainty while learning to solve complex problems.

Die vorliegende Studie diskutiert die Entwicklung eines Testinstruments zur Messung von Bewertungskompetenz im Sinne der Teilkompetenz Bewerten, Entscheiden und Reflektieren (BER) innerhalb des Göttinger Modells der Bewertungskompetenz im Kontext nachhaltiger Entwicklung (Bögeholz 2011) für das Unterrichtsfach Physik in der Sekundarstufe. Die ausgewählten Aufgabenkontexte beschreiben die Erzeugung, die Speicherung und die Nutzung elektrischer Energie. Sie schließen damit auch an die aktuelle gesellschaftliche Diskussion um Erneuerbare Energien an und untersuchen diesbezüglich das Entscheidungsvermögen und die Bewertungskompetenz heutiger Schülerinnen und Schüler. Die Einsatzfähigkeit des in dieser Studie entwickelten Testinstruments wurde zunächst im Rahmen zweier Vorstudien überprüft, bevor die Haupterhebung als Querschnittstudie in den Jahrgängen 6, 8, 10 und 12 erfolgte (N = 850 Schülerinnen und Schüler an Gymnasien). Nach dem Ansatz von Eggert (2008), Eggert und Bögeholz (2006, 2010) ist es dabei als paper-and-pencil -Test konzipiert und beinhaltet zwei Entscheidungsaufgaben und eine Reflexionsaufgabe. Die empirisch gewonnenen Daten wurden zunächst anhand eines entwickelten Scoring Guides codiert und anschließend sowohl unter Gesichtspunkten der Klassischen als auch der Probabilistischen Testtheorie ausgewertet. Das entwickelte Testinstrument hat sich unter Reliabilitäts- und Validitätsaspekten bewährt. Item-Fit-Parameter zeigen, dass sich die empirischen Daten gut in einem eindimensionalen Rasch-Partial-Credit-Modell abbilden lassen. Unter anderem konnten Zusammenhänge von BER mit dem Schulalter der Schülerinnen und Schüler nachgewiesen werden. Geringe Korrelationen von BER bestehen zu verschiedenen Schulnoten (u. a. zu Deutsch, Mathematik, Politik und Physik in der Klasse 10), zudem wird das Testergebnis für BER kaum von Lesekompetenzen beeinflusst. <p><p> Externer Link zum Testinstrument: http://dx.doi.org/10.7477/39:41:17

Questões sociocientíficas são dilemas sociais de natureza polêmica que envolvem moralidade e ética. O problema da validade ética do aborto possui ligações conceituais com a Ciência e é uma questão bastante controversa, representando uma questão sociocientífica. Neste trabalho, foram transcritos e analisados trechos da interação de adolescentes discutindo a questão do aborto. A unidade de análise foi o argumento segundo o padrão de Toulmin (2003), a partir do qual foram identificados valores empregados pelos alunos, como: priorização de questões sociais; riscos e responsabilidade; respeito ao valor da vida; valores familiares e relacionais e regras de decisão. Os valores usados na discussão foram representativos das linguagens éticas do cuidado e da justiça, se usarmos os termos derivados da área da psicologia moral. Os mais freqüentes foram os chamados valores familiares e relacionais. Os alunos resolveram as questões utilizando raciocínios baseados em princípios, raciocínios consequencialistas, deliberações baseadas em emoção ou em intuição. As posições intuitivas foram mais comuns, seguidas pelo raciocínio baseado em princípios. Alguns conceitos científicos se mostraram presentes na discussão, indicando que temas sociocientíficos são oportunidades de integração de tais conteúdos. Os conceitos presentes foram: método contraceptivo, interdependência funcional, tecnologia médica, desenvolvimento, funcionamento da pílula do dia seguinte, óvulo, genes, sangue, DNA, maturidade sexual e gravidez. Foram analisadas também, segundo o padrão de Toulmin, as funções de conceitos e valores nos argumentos. Os conceitos apresentavam principalmente função de dados, enquanto os valores apresentavam principalmente função de garantias, conforme esperado e identificado na literatura. Outras funções para conceitos científicos e valores também surgiram nos argumentos, contrastando com o padrão comumente encontrado. A preponderância de determinados padrões morais e valores pode ter diversas explicações, que vão desde a dominância de algumas formas de pensamento na classe social da qual os alunos fazem parte até a forma como as pessoas tomam decisões morais em geral. A importância dos valores e o surgimento dos conceitos científicos na discussão sugerem que os temas sociocientíficos deveriam ter um lugar privilegiado nas aulas de ciências, assim como as questões afetivas e morais que influenciam o raciocínio informal e o desenvolvimento do caráter dos indivíduos. / Socioscientific issues are social dilemmas which are polemic in nature and related to morality and ethics. Abortion is such an example, as it is controversial and has conceptual links to Science. In this work, fragments from students discussions in groups about abortion were transcripted and analyzed. The Toulmin (2003) argument pattern was used as major tool for analysis, allowing the researcher to identify the values held by students, such as: social issues; risks and responsibility; respect for life; familiar and relational values and decision rules. These values can be seen as a representation of care and justice ethic languages, in terms of moral psychology. Familiar and relational values were the most frequent. Students solved the questions using consequencialist reasoning, reasoning based on principles, emotive and intuitive deliberations. Intuitive positions were more common, followed by principled reasoning. Some scientific concepts were brought up to the discussion by the students, which can be seen as an evidence of socioscientific issues working as promoters of scientific knowledge integration. The concepts found in the discussion were: contraceptive method, functional interdependence, medical technology, development, the -morning-after-pill?, ovule, gens, blood, DNA, sexual maturity and pregnancy. Following the Toulmin argument pattern, the functions of values and scientific concepts were analyzed too. Concepts mainly showed up as data in the arguments, while values were seen mostly in the position of warrants, just as expected and identified in literature. They also emerged in other functions, contrasting with the most common patterns. Prevalence of some moral patterns and values could be explained in many ways, like the dominance of some thoughts and ideas in the social class to which the students belong or maybe some common mechanism of making moral choices. The importance of values and the rising of scientific concepts in the debate suggest that socioscientific themes should have a privileged place in science classes, as well as moral and affective issues which influence informal reasoning and character development.

Scientific literacy is concerned with the informed citizens' ability to negotiate scientifically-related societal issues. The suite of skills necessary to negotiate these complex issues is referred to as Socioscientific Reasoning (SSR). SSR requires, among other things, perspective-taking abilities in order to consider the multi-faceted nature of these open-ended, debatable socioscientific issues (SSI). Developing interventions and instruments to foster and measure perspective taking in support of SSR is therefore critical to the promotion of functional scientific literacy through both research and practice. Although widely studied in many disciplines, perspective taking is a particularly tangled construct that has been used to describe a range of activities representing different psychological domains and applied interchangeably with related constructs such as role taking, empathy, and theory of mind. This ambiguity makes it difficult to ensure construct validity and prevents science education researchers from honing in on the precise skills they wish to study and promote. To clarify the construct of perspective taking, this study undertook a conceptual analysis to operationalize perspective taking, drawing comparisons and distinctions between it and related constructs. Further, by applying a method known as conception development, perspective taking was positioned in the context of SSR, particularly as it relates to moral development, in order to devise a more precise construct relating perspective taking to SSR called socioscientific perspective taking (SSPT). It is asserted that SSPT requires engagement with others or their circumstances, an etic/emic shift, and a moral context comprised of reflective and reflexive judgment. Finally, in order to identify promising interventions for promoting SSPT in the science classroom, the newly-developed SSPT construct was applied to a series of extensively researched curricular frameworks that promote perspective taking in three non-science disciplines including historical empathy (social studies education), method acting (theater education), and autism intervention (special education). The aim of this theoretical inquiry was to translate successful perspective-taking interventions into SSI contexts, yielding an array of promising approaches for fostering SSPT while assessing the feasibility of each of these fields as potential sources for novel and expansive work in SSI to promote scientific literacy. Implications for science education research and practice are discussed.