Decision making about socioscientific issues is an important aspect of modern science education worldwide. Among the many topics that represent socioscientific issues, issues relating to the sustainable development of our environment are one crucial topic. However, difficulties exist with respect to the assessment of teaching outcomes related to these issues. This paper presents results from two quantitative studies that were conducted to develop a test instrument that measures students' use of decision-making strategies in situations relating to sustainable development. Data were analyzed using the Rasch partial credit model. Analyses concerning reliability and validity showed that the developed instrument provides an adequate measure of students' use of decision-making strategies. Analyses indicated that the test instrument can be used among different age groups and that decision-making competence increases with respect to years of education. Most elaborate strategies were characterized by the use of trade-offs, the ability to weigh decision criteria, and the ability to reflect on the structure of decision-making processes. In contrast, baselevel strategies were characterized by the use of cutoffs and an absence of elaborate metareflection. The results provide a valuable starting point for analyzing and fostering students' decision-making competence in the science classroom.

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In this paper, we trace selected strands of the German path to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). We start by addressing pre-ESD research, and move to the concept of Gestaltungskompetenz, the core concept of German ESD. The concept had to be realigned as to become more compatible with international research on learning outcomes (competencies). Compared to its beginnings, the meaning of Gestaltungskompetenz has much advanced, e.g., influenced by German competence research in science education, to which the Göttingen Model for socioscientific reasoning and decision making contributes. The paper presents a new competence dimension on "Evaluating and reflecting solutions quantitatively-economically" for this model. The contribution highlights the integrative and interdisciplinary scope of the educational challenges posed by Sustainable Development.

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of cooperative training strategies to enhance students' socioscientific decision making as well as their metacognitive skills in the science classroom. Socioscientific decision making refers to both “describing socioscientific issues” as well as “developing and evaluating solutions” to socioscientific issues. We investigated two cooperative training strategies which differed with respect to embedded metacognitive instructions that were developed on the basis of the IMPROVE method. Participants were 360 senior high school students who studied either in a cooperative learning setting (COOP), a cooperative learning setting with embedded metacognitive questions (COOP+META), or a nontreatment control group. Results indicate that students in the two training conditions outperformed students in the control group on both processes of socioscientific decision making. However, students in the COOP+META condition did not outperform students in the COOP condition. With respect to students' learning outcomes on the regulation facet of metacognition, results indicate that all conditions improved over time. Students in the COOP+META condition exhibited highest mean scores at posttest measures, but again, results were not significant. Implications for integrating metacognitive instructions into science classrooms are discussed.