New Perspectives in Science Education

Science education aims at supporting students to acquire skills that enable them to make informed decisions on current societal grand challenges. The present work investigates how 26 Austrian secondary school students experience working with a socio-scientific issues-based classroom setting addressing antibiotic resistance (ABR). Infections caused by antibiotic-resistant pathogens have become a serious global health hazard that requires action across all economic and societal sectors [1]. This multilayered and challenging social issue with conceptual links to science provides an excellent platform for dealing with socio-scientific issues (SSI). Therefore, the pedagogical SSI-framework developed by Zeidler, Applebaum, and Sadler [2] was modified by the authors to allow students to promote the exercise of informal reasoning on ABR evoked during class debate activities. Within this teaching approach, role-based learning is used as a suitable opportunity to prepare future citizens with decision-making skills. To examine the situational characteristics of the SSI work, an open-ended essay questions instrument was used upon completion of the SSI setting. A qualitative case study analysis process [3] was applied to students’ written contributions and perceived cognitive and affective outcomes. According to the students’ self-reported experiences, the content was interesting and related to a current SSI. Almost all students claim that they inquired about miscellaneous stakeholder positions and learned to organize, analyze, evaluate, and present relevant information. The students affirm that they learned to argue for the positions of their assigned role. Furthermore, the students perceive that the outcome of working with this SSI has relevance for their future. Findings indicate that the students do not, however, predicate that they learned more through this time-consuming and organizationally complex SSI approach than during ordinary science lessons.

Keywords: socio-scientific issues, learning outcome, students’ experiences.

References:
[1] World Health Organization (WHO) (2015). Global Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance. Geneva: World Health Organization.
[2] Zeidler, D.L., Applebaum, S.M., & Sadler, T.D. (2011). Enhancing a Socioscientific Issues Classroom: Transformative Transformations. In Sadler, T.D. (ed): Socio-scientific Issues in the Classroom. Teaching, Learning and Research (pp. 277-305). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands (Contemporary Trends and Issues in Science Education, 39).
[3] Mayring, P. (2014). Qualitative content analysis: theoretical foundation, basic procedures and software solution. Klagenfurt.