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Asia-Pacific Forum
on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 11, Issue 1, Article 2
(June, 2010) |
SEE-SEP: From a separate to a holistic view of socioscientific issues
Shu-Nu CHANG RUNDGREN* and Carl-Johan RUNDGREN
Swedish National Graduate School in Science and Technology Education Research
Department of Social and Welfare Studies, Linköping University
S-601 74 Norrköping, SWEDENEmail: shunuchang@gmail.com and carl-johan.a.rundgren@liu.se
Received 19 Feb., 2010
Revised 13 June, 2010*Corresponding author
Contents
- Abstract
- Introduction
- What can SSIs do in science education?
- Role 1: Beyond STS to the achievement of scientific literacy
- Role 2: Transferring content knowledge and skills to real contexts
- Role 3: Enhancing decision making and critical thinking
- Role 4: Promoting science communication
- Role 5: Inducing interest in learning science
- Role 6: Providing cross-disciplinary concepts
- The different dimensions of SSIs
- Conclusions and implications
- References
The trend of socioscientific issues (SSIs) has been emergent in the science- and technology-dominated society of today. Accordingly, during the past 20 years, students’ skills of argumentation and informal reasoning about SSIs have achieved greater emphasis and profile in school education. Based upon the importance of SSIs, more and more researchers have investigated how students reason and make arguments about SSIs, and also explored the dimensions influencing students’ arguments and also involved in the various SSIs. This article has a threefold purpose. Firstly, we want to address the different roles of SSIs in science education nowadays, and secondly, after reviewing the divergent dimensions involved in SSIs from previous literature, we want to provide a holistic view to represent the essence of SSIs via the SEE-SEP model (connecting six subject areas of Sociology/culture, Environment, Economy, Science, Ethics/morality and Policy with three aspects of value, personal experience and knowledge) developed here. Thirdly, to support the SEE-SEP model, examples extracted from former studies are presented. The implications for research and for school science education are discussed.
