Conceptualizing Critical Science Education through Socioscientific Issues
Conceptualizing Critical Science Education through Socioscientific Issues refers to an educational approach that aims to equip students with the skills and knowledge needed to analyze and make informed decisions about complex real-world problems related to science and society.
In this approach, socioscientific issues - i.e., issues that have scientific and social dimensions, such as climate change, genetic engineering, or vaccine hesitancy - are used as a context for teaching scientific concepts, skills, and values.
The goal is to foster critical thinking, scientific literacy, and civic engagement, by encouraging students to engage in inquiry-based learning, authentic assessments, and collaborative problem-solving activities that require them to evaluate evidence, consider multiple perspectives, and make ethical and informed decisions.
To achieve this goal, the approach draws on various theoretical and methodological frameworks, such as critical pedagogy, constructivism, postmodernism, and science and technology studies, and involves curriculum development, teacher professional development, and community engagement.
Conceptualizing critical science education through socioscientific issues seeks to promote a more democratic, inclusive, and socially responsible approach to science education, that empowers students to become informed and active citizens in an increasingly complex and interconnected world.
This thesis can broadly be placed within the area of critical studies in science education. As Bazzul writes, "The goal of a critical scholar (of science education) is to render what seems commonsensical, strange", which I interpret as challenging mainstream science education, critically questioning the science curriculum, the ideological assumptions thatnderpin it, and positing alternatives . Research in
this area, in Levinson's words, "embrace feminist, post-colonial, critical pedagogy
agendas and broadly aim to interrogate the representations of science education in a social world
distorted by late capitalist and neo-liberal economics" . The theoretical perspectives that
inform this area of research are derived from a range of areas that span philosophy
of science, educational philosophy, sociology of science, science studies, sociology of
education and Science-Technology-Society (STS) studies, to name a few. These perspectives
have been operationalized in empirical investigations involving students and teachers .
Many of these studies (both theoretical and empirical) also call for inculcating, in students of
science and the lay public alike, Critical Scientific Literacy (CSL) and advocate politicization
of the science curriculum.
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