Curriculum Integration for Scientific Literacy and Social Responsibility:A Case Study of Students'Perceptions of Learning Through a Socio-Scientific Issue-based Unit
Recent science education reforms around the world have called for preparing scientific literate citizens for the 21st century.Among various approaches,engaging students in socio-scientific issues(SSI)has proven to be effective in achieving the goal.In particular,learning science through SSI gives students opportunities to develop their own positions or solutions to the complex societal issues that are relevant to student lives.Also,SSI teaching and learning can be seen as a form of meaningful curriculum integration as students need to explore different dimensions(e.g.,cultural,historical,economic,political,etc.)of the underlying issues in addition to the scientific knowledge.In this study,we explore students'perspectives on their learning experiences concerning an issue-based unit on vaping.In particular,we investigate how students view the SSI approach in general and how they appropriate the epistemic tools for systems thinking.The primary data source is semi-structured interviews of 33 focus students from four biology teachers'science classes after the completion of an issue-based vaping unit.The results of this study suggest that students in general held a positive attitude towards SSI learning:They found the learning processes to be interesting,relevant,promoting student agency,and beneficial for learning.We also identified three types of appropriation of the epistemic tools for systems thinking,a)lack of appropriation,b)appropriating surface features,and c)appropriate epistemic purposes.The implications for SSI teaching and learning and curriculum integration are discussed.
scientific literacy socio-scientific issues epistemic tools systems thinking
Ke Li
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,America
国内会议
上海
英文
31-51
2019-11-01（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）