Science Teachers’ Perceptions of the Emergence of Responsible Research and Innovation in School

Abstract

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) has recently gained wider importance in the European Union (EU) as an emergent framework informing the governance of science. While a growing body of literature describing RRI and its main conceptual dimensions has appeared in the last seven years or so and in several policy documents, the European Commission has emphasized the need to promote science education in the RRI context, there is no theoretical elaboration of how RRI can be meaningfully integrated into the practice of science education. In order to address this problem, the present research aimed at inquiring into the way in which science teachers make sense of RRI in school. Data were gathered with individual semi-structured interviews from 29 science teachers working in comprehensive schools and hobby schools. Abductive content analysis combining data and conceptual dimensions of RRI was used. In the light of how the science teachers in our sample have made sense of RRI, four theoretical categories have emerged: (1) meaning making; (2) taking action; (3) exploring; and (4) inclusion. These findings have important implications for developing a theory of RRI which can be beneficial for researchers as well as teachers for meaningfully integrating RRI into science education. Keywords: abductive content analysis, responsibility as care, Responsible Research and Innovation, science education, science teacher.

Fatores de inovação docente em Portugal segundo os professores

“…Embora os resultados sejam semelhantes aos encontrados no contexto espanhol (Monge López, 2018), o objetivo deste trabalho não foi encontrar diferenças significativas entre os dois países. Apesar das influências dos contextos culturais, políticos ou econômicos na inovação educativa (Mesquita et al, 2014;Burget et al, 2018;Díaz-Gibson et al, 2019;Fix et al, 2021), aqui é oferecida uma visão atualizada dos principais fatores de inovação em Portugal numa perspectiva que integra o quantitativo e o qualitativo. E isso responde à necessidade de fornecer uma conceituação contextualizada da inovação (Tavares, 2019).…”

“…Por ser um construto socialmente elaborado, há diferenças nas percepções e conceitualizações feitas pelos professores sobre a inovação educativa dependendo da cultura e do país de origem, como Portugal (Mesquita et al, 2014), Estônia (Burget et al, 2018), China (Zhu e Engels, 2014), Espanha (Díaz-Gibson et al, 2019), Países Baixos (Hofman, Jansen e Spijkerboer, 2011;Fix et al, 2021), Estados Unidos (Gray, 2001).…”

Fostering Chemistry Students’ Scientific Literacy for Responsible Citizenship through Socio-Scientific Inquiry-Based Learning (SSIBL)

“…Implementing aspects of democratic citizenship education to foster critical and responsible participation in science education is still challenging for various reasons [48]. Several studies have shown that teachers manifest a relatively limited understanding of what responsible citizenship is and what citizenship education entails; they find challenging the deployment of complex SSIs in their teaching, while there is also a lack of instructional strategies supporting the meaningful integration of RRI into the practice of science education [49][50][51][52][53].…”

“…This hypothesis is grounded on two different aspects. First, the SSIBL pedagogical framework was designed with a direct aim of enhancing students' responsible citizenship, emphasizing that humans are accountable for the nature and impact of scientific and technological developments, as the essence of RRI [9, [52][53][54]. Second, even though empirical studies reporting on the deployment of SSIBL pedagogy in authentic school classrooms are still limited, a significant corpus of studies has previously deployed SSIBL pedagogy in professional development sessions with science teachers, who have reported on the added value of SSIBL for their teaching [1,7,48,[60][61][62][63][64].…”

“…Our second research hypothesis was that SSIBL pedagogy would contribute to the enhancement of students' scientific literacy for responsible citizenship due to its multidimensional nature (H2). This hypothesis draws on the fact that the SSIBL pedagogical framework comprised three different constituents: SSIs, Inquiry-based learning, and Citizenship education [9, [52][53][54]. These pedagogical approaches are translated in three corresponding instructional phases (Ask-Find out-Act) providing a learning trajectory for students to improve their scientific literacy for responsible citizenship.…”