Global sustainability and public understanding of science: The role of socioscientific issues in the international community
Dana L. ZEIDLER
Past President, National Association for Research in Science Teaching
Professor of Science Education
Department of Secondary Education
College of Education
University of South Florida
Tampa,
Florida USA
Email: Zeidler@usf.edu
Contents
- Introduction
- Sustainable Science Education in a Pluralistic World
- Scientific Literacy as Responsible Decision-making
- A Worldview of Scientific Literacy in a “Free Market State”
- Avoiding the Bifurcation of Science Through Prudence
- Membership in Scientific Community
- Transformative Science Education: One Global Community
- References
IntroductionThe central message for this foreword is rather straightforward. I wish to advocate for and emphatically embrace a truly international worldview for the identity of science educators who possess any degree of accountability for the teachers and students under their tutelage. The platform on which I advance the notion of an international identity is one that connects to global sustainability and public understanding science. I suspect that the issue of sustainability, coupled with public understanding of science, is one that virtually all science educators would promote. We have a diverse field – note the array of topics represented by authors within our leading journals. But it seems to me that we do share common goals: scientific literacy for all, teachers who challenge their students’ epistemological beliefs, and providing opportunities for students to become responsible citizens who will eventually give deliberate thought to the quality of the natural world in which they dwell.
In recent years, the socioscientific issues framework has provided researchers and educators with a viable means to connect students the with the world around them (Mueller, Zeidler, & Jenkins, Spring, 2011; Zeidler, Applebaum & Sadler, 2011), engaging them in the activity of science (Walker, & Zeidler, 2007; Zeidler, Applebaum, & Sadler, 2011), fostering evidence-based reasoning (Applebaum, Zeidler, & Chiodo, 2010), developing nature of science understanding (Eastwood, Sadler, Zeidler, Lewis, Amiri & Applebaum, in press; Zeidler, Sadler, Applebaum & Callahan, 2009), facilitating scientific literacy (Zeidler & Sadler, (2011), and fostering a sense of ethical caring and character about the social and natural world (Fowler, Zeidler, & Sadler, 2009; Zeidler, Berkowitz & Bennett, 2011; Zeidler & Sadler, 2008). These studies provide a basis to raise viable questions about whether a singular identity of scientific literacy (or at least what I will argue is the most important feature of any notion of what it means to be scientifically literate) is feasible in a pluralistic world.
Copyright (C) 2011 HKIEd APFSLT. Volume 12, Issue 1, Foreword (Jun., 2011). All Rights Reserved.