Students’ Ontological Security and Agency in Science Education—An Example from Reasoning about the Use of Gene Technology

Abstract

This paper reports on a study of how students' reasoning about socioscientific issues is framed by three dynamics: societal structures, agency and how trust and security issues are handled. Examples from gene technology were used as the forum for interviews with 13 Swedish high-school students (year 11, age 17 -18). A grid based on modalities from the societal structures described by Giddens was used to structure the analysis. The results illustrate how the participating students used both modalities for 'Legitimation' and 'Domination' to justify positions that accept or reject new technology. The analysis also showed how norms and knowledge can be used to justify opposing positions in relation to building trust in science and technology, or in democratic decisions expected to favour personal norms. Here, students accepted or rejected the authority of experts based on perceptions of the knowledge base that the authority was seen to be anchored in. Difficulty in discerning between material risks (reduced safety) and immaterial risks (loss of norms) was also found. These outcomes are used to draw attention to the educational challenges associated with students' using knowledge claims (Domination) to support norms (Legitimation) and how this is related to the development of a sense of agency in terms of sharing norms with experts or with laymen. IntroductionA good example of an educational context where understanding of the development of agency and reasoning is important is when discussions about societal use of gene technology take place. This article uses such a context to look at the development of agency in relation to societal structures when students handle trust and security issues.

What’s natural about nature? Deceptive concepts in socio-scientific decision-making

“…Subsequently, and in line with previous findings (Lindahl & Linder, 2013), students have difficulties integrating morals and knowledge into their socio-scientific reasoning. Since the students' concepts of nature can have aspects of morality as well as knowledge, they need to learn how to discern these different aspects.…”

“…For each of the participating students the questionnaire responses were analysed and depicted as a mind-map representation (Lindahl & Linder, 2013) of the salient features of their thinking on the issue, see the example below in Figure 1. The three topics in the figure represent main areas discussed by the student and the sub-topics shows the students main concerns.…”

Leerlingperceptie van agency in het VO: een exploratief onderzoek naar het ontwerp en de kwaliteit van de Student Agency Scale (SAS)

“…Monitoren of het leerproces verloopt in overeenstemming met doelen en waarden. (Arnold & Clarke, 2014;Bahou, 2012;Basu & Barton, 2010;Charteris, 2015;Charteris & Smardon, 2018;Dabbagh & Castaneda, 2020;Deakin Crick et al, 2015;Deed et al, 2014;González-Howard & McNeill, 2020;Lindahl & Linder, 2013;Mäkelä & Kalalahti, 2020;Martin, 2004;Matusov et al, 2016;Vaughn, 2020) "I go over what I have been doing, keep track of understanding, adjust my approach, reflect on a test. ", "I feel pleased with myself when things go well.…”

“…Normen (Dahlstrom, 2019;Ko & Krist, 2019;Lindahl & Linder, 2013;Matusov et al 2016;Shanahan, 2009) "Doing well in school is important." Werkethiek (Basu et al, 2008;Burger & Walk, 2016;Mäkelä & Kalalahti, 2020) "I work hard when we start something new in class.…”

Attitudes and Language Use in Group Discussions on Socio-Scientific Issues

“…The assessment of reasoning quality is crucial and further attempts to integrate different aspects into one model to provide possibilities to analyse the different aspects of informal reasoning may still add to the field (Evagorou & Osborne, 2013;Gustavsson & Öhman, 2013). The question concerning how different aspects of socio-scientific reasoning, such as the moral, emotional and rational aspects, can be integrated into the classroom discourse in a fruitful manner still need further consideration (Lindahl & Linder, 2013).…”