Beliefs of Science Teachers Toward the Teaching of Science/Technological/Social Issues: Are We Addressing National Standards?

Abstract

As science educators, we must view the changing nature of society brought on by technology and the global nature of society as an impetus to reexamine the nature of science instruction. We have been bestowed with the responsibility to educate students on a variety of topics that less than two decades ago did not exist. Many of these social issues are controversial in nature and are directly linked to the local, regional, national, and global communities in which we exist. However, including these social issues in the extant curriculum of science has, at best, been limited. This is true even though the National Science Education Standards specifically indicate that science and technology, as well as science in personal and social perspectives, are integral to science education. The following study examines a group of science teachers’ beliefs about the implementation of controversial social/technological issues in the extant science curriculum. Indications are that teachers believe that social issues are important to study, yet lack the support from their communities to teach social issues.

Societal Issues and Their Importance for Contemporary Science Education—a Pedagogical Justification and the State-of-the-Art in Israel, Germany, and the Usa

“…Nevertheless, they seem to have one thing in common. Their application still seems to be rare in many countries (Gräber, 2002;Pederson & Totten, 2001).…”

“…These beliefs can become barriers for effective implementation of different content, instructional techniques, and pedagogical interventions and help perpetuating traditional practices (Goodman, 1988). A recent survey conducted in the USA (Luft, Ortegaz & Wong-Kavas, 2009) showed that a high percentage of the science teachers strongly support the importance of incorporating more real-world issues into their classroom in order to increase the relevance of science, as it was recognized by Pederson & Totten (2001) concerning societal issues. However, this does not automatically lead to a situation where the societal dimension of socioscientific issues becomes an equal partner in the teaching and learning of science because the positive view of the teachers does not receive enough support by their immediate professional community.…”

“…Although some teachers already have positive attitudes toward a stronger inclusion of societal issues into society, they often fail to implement societal issues due to the lack of support and scaffolding (Pederson & Totten, 2001). It can be assumed that, for many teachers as well as for many professional development providers, teaching sciencerelated issues is a novel idea to which they were neither exposed in their initial training (pre-service) at the university nor in other professional development experiences.…”

Education for sustainable development in chemistry – challenges, possibilities and pedagogical models in Finland and elsewhere

“…If the teachers present the information to students based only on textbooks, they potentially create a false dichotomy between content and social issues. (Hofstein et al, 2011;Pedersen & Totten, 2001) The teachers struggle with deciding on a suitable socio-scientific issue on their own and finding the time for it in the curriculum. It is counterintuitive to teach SSI when the national exams highlight other kinds of issues.…”

“…Some teachers view SSI as additional elements that are not considered key elements of the curriculum. (Grace, 2006;Reis & Galvao, 2004) It is possible that the teachers receive no support from their colleagues or from the community outside the school in the interdisciplinary teaching of SSI (Hofstein et al, 2011;Kärnä et al, 2012;Pedersen & Totten, 2001 Reis & Galvao, 2004 Lack of interdisciplinary support from colleagues or community At the practical level, the inclusion of a socio-scientific issue in the chemistry lesson should be more than just a lecture about the issue and the related concerns (Sadler, 2004) -which still seems to be the most common approach in traditional science teaching. Studentcentered or inquiry-based science teaching is far less common than the traditional deductive teaching methods, even thought the benefits of these approaches are well-recognised in science education research (Anderson, 2002;Kärnä et al, 2012;Rocard et al, 2007;Smithenry, 2010).…”