In many educational contexts throughout the world, increasing focus has been placed on socio-scientific issues; that is, disagreements about potential personal, social and/or environmental problems associated with fields of science and technology. Some suggest (as do we) that many of these potential problems, such as those associated with climate change, are so serious that education needs to be oriented towards encouraging and enabling students to become citizen activists, ready and willing to take personal and social actions to reduce risks associated with the issues. Towards this outcome, teachers we studied encouraged and enabled students to direct open-ended primary (e.g., correlational studies), as well as secondary (e.g., internet searches), research as sources of motivation and direction for their activist projects. In this paper, we concluded, based on constant comparative analyses of qualitative data, that school students' tendencies towards socio-political activism appeared to depend on myriad, possibly interacting, factors. We focused, though, on curriculum policy statements, school culture, teacher characteristics and student-generated research findings. Our conclusions may be useful to those promoting education for sustainability, generally, and, more specifically, to those encouraging activism on such issues informed by student-led research.

Progress has been made in addressing socioscientific issues, such as debates about merits of nuclear power, by encouraging school students to consider complex issues and take positions about them. We contend, however, that they also need to learn to take research-informed actions to address issues. In the study reported here, we concluded-based on constant comparative analyses of qualitative data-that student teachers seemed to develop commitments to advocacy for researchinformed actions on socioscientific issues as a result, in part, of their self-directed primary and secondary research. This research appears to have implications for science teacher education, science education, and the well-being of individuals, societies, and environments.Résumé: Des progrès considérables ontété réalisés en matière de questions socio-scientifiques, par exemple dans les débats sur les mérites de l'énergie nucléaire, en encourageant lesétudiants desécoles a se pencher sur des questions complexes età prendre positionà leur sujet. Cependant, nous estimons que les enseignants en formation doiventégalement apprendreà agir sur la base de recherches déjà réalisées pour affronter ces questions. Dans l'étude dont il est question ici, en nous fondant sur des analyses comparatives continues de données qualitatives, nous avons conclu que, en matière de questions socio-scientifiques, les futurs enseignants semblent de plus en plus engagésà défendre les actions fondées sur la recherche, et ce, en raison de leur propre recherche primaire et secondaire. La présenteétude a des implications pour la formation des enseignants de sciences, la didactique des sciences en général, ainsi que le bien-être des individus, des sociétés et des environnements.

The body of literature connecting science education and citizenship is growing, through the lens, for example, of science, technology, society and environment (STSE) education. The case study highlighted here explores ways in which students in a seventh-grade science class used studies of waste management to engage in active citizenship. In our analyses of their action projects, we suggest that students formed new connections between science education and citizenship. Through personal changes they appeared to undergo, it seemed that they gained recognition of the impact that an individual can have on the well-being of self, society, and environment. Factors influencing their personal changes, including changes in their science literacy and self-efficacy beliefs, indicate directions for possible expansion studies of interactions between science and citizenship education.

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