Ben Herman

Preparing students to achieve the lofty goal of functional scientific literacy entails addressing the normative and non-normative facets of socioscientific issues (SSI) such as scientific processes, the nature of science (NOS) and diverse sociocultural perspectives. SSI instructional approaches have demonstrated some efficacy for promoting students’ NOS views, compassion for others, and decision-making. However, extant investigations appear to neglect fully engaging students through authentic SSI in several ways. These include: (i) providing SSI instruction through classroom approaches that are divorced from students’ lived experiences; (ii) demonstrating a contextual misalignment between SSI and NOS (particularly evident in NOS assessments); and (iii) framing decision-making and position-taking analogously—with the latter being an unreliable indicator of how people truly act. The significance of the convergent parallel mixed-methods investigation reported here is how it responds to these shortcomings through exploring how place-based SSI instruction focused on the contentious environmental issue of wolf reintroduction in the Greater Yellowstone Area impacted sixty secondary students’ NOS views, compassion toward those impacted by contentious environmental issues, and pro-environmental intent. Moreover, this investigation explores how those perspectives associate with the students’ pro-environmental action of donating to a Yellowstone environmental organization. Results demonstrate that the students’ NOS views became significantly more accurate and contextualized, with moderate to large effect, through the place-based SSI instruction. Through that instruction, the students also exhibited significant gains in their compassion for nature and people impacted by contentious environmental issues and pro-environmental intent. Further analyses showed that donating students developed and demonstrated significantly more robust and contextualized NOS views, compassion for people and nature impacted by contentious environmental issues, and pro-environmental intent than their non-donating counterparts. Pedagogical implications include how place-based learning in authentic settings could better prepare students to understand NOS, become socioculturally aware, and engage SSI across a variety of contexts.

Abstract This study reports the participation of 13 secondary science teachers in informal support networks and how that participation was associated with their nature of science (NOS)teaching practices 2 to 5 years after having graduated from the same science teacher education program. The nine teachers who participated in informal support networks taught the NOS at high/medium levels, while the four non-participating teachers taught the NOS at low levels.The nine high/medium NOS implementation teachers credited the informal support networks for maintaining/heightening their sense of responsibility for teaching NOS and for helping them navigate institutional constraints that impede effective NOS instruction. Several high/medium NOS instruction implementers initially struggled to autonomously frame and resolve the complexities experienced in schools and thus drew from the support networks to engage in more sophisticated forms of teacher decision-making. In contrast, the NOS pedagogical decisions of the four teachers not participating in support networks were governed primarily by the expectations and constraints experienced in their schools. Implications of this study include the need for reconsidering the structure of teacher mentorship programs to ensure they do not promote archaic science teaching practices that are at odds with reform efforts in science education.

Given the abundance of literature describing the strong relationship between inquiry-based teaching and student achievement, more should be known about the factors impacting science teachers’ classroom inquiry implementation. This study utilises the theory of planned behaviour to propose and validate a causal model of inquiry-based teaching through analysing data relating to high-performing countries retrieved from the 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study assessments. Data analysis was completed through structural equation modelling using a polychoric correlation matrix for data input and diagonally weighted least squares estimation. Adequate fit of the full model to the empirical data was realised. The model demonstrates that the extent the teachers participated in academic collaborations was positively related to their occupational satisfaction, confidence in teaching inquiry, and classroom inquiry practices. Furthermore, the teachers’ confidence with implementing inquiry was positively related to their classroom inquiry implementation and occupational satisfaction. However, perceived student-generated constraints demonstrated a negative relationship with the teachers’ confidence with implementing inquiry and occupational satisfaction. Implications from this study include supporting teachers through promoting collaborative opportunities that facilitate inquiry-based practices and occupational satisfaction.

Abstract: Incorporating accurate and explicit nature of science instruction throughout the school year is important for overcoming long engrained student misconceptions regarding what science is and how it works. One common misconception is the view that experiments are the sole ...

Misconceptions about climate change science are pervasive among the US public. This study investigated the possibility that these misconceptions may be reflective of science teachers’ knowledge and teaching of climate change science. Florida and Puerto Rico secondary science teachers who claim to teach extensively about climate change were surveyed in regard to their conceptions of climate change science and the climate change related topics they teach. Results show that many teachers hold naïve views about climate change (e.g. that ozone layer depletion is a primary cause of climate change) and climate change science (e.g. that it must be based on controlled experiments for it to be valid). In addition, teachers in both groups neglect crucial topics such as how evidence for climate change is developed and the social, political, and economic dimensions of climate change. Our results suggest the need for teachers to understand how to teach climate change and the nature of climate change science using authentic contexts that promote effective socioscientific decision-making and climate change mitigation.

The study reported here investigated experienced teachers’ views on several nature of science (NOS) issues 2 to 5 years after they completed a demanding secondary science teacher education program in which the NOS was an extensive
and recurring component. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected and analyzed to determine study participants’ NOS understanding. Study participant’s NOS
views were determined to be generally accurate and robust, suggesting that experiences in their science teacher education program had a long-lasting positive impact on NOS understanding. The preservice program that study participants completed has several unique features that may account for that long-lasting impact and has implications for preservice and inservice science teacher education professional development.

The science education field readily recognizes that perceptions about science’s claims and nature influence socioscientific decision making. However, sociocultural factors may overshadow these perceptions when people are forced to make personally impacting choices contextualized within actual socioscientific issues. This investigation determined 324 secondary students’ perceptions about global warming (GW) science and willingness to mitigate GW across five categories of actions—each requiring varying levels of personal sacrifice (e.g., supporting GW education versus limiting personal reproduction). Identified sociocultural indicators among the students included ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic classification. Results indicate that GW science views and sociocultural factors became less impactful on the participants’ willingness to mitigate GW as the GW-mitigating actions required greater personal involvement and sacrifice. However,
most consistently significantly predicting willingness to mitigate GW was the participants’ perceptions about the validity of GW science claims. Furthermore, while the participants’ perceptions about the nature of GW science methods significantly influenced their willingness to enact certain GW-mitigating actions, socioeconomic classification and ethnicity were oftentimes stronger indicators of the participants’ inclination to mitigate GW. Implications
for education discussed include promoting responsible socioscientific decisionmaking through contextually teaching about how and why GW science is valid while also considering how sociocultural factors can impact socioscientific choices. 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 1–38, 2014