New Perspectives in Science Education
Preservice Teachers' Agency and Systems Thinking in the Actions Proposed for Addressing Complex Health Issues
Araitz Uskola, University of the Basque Country (EHU) (Spain)
Abstract
Students in science classrooms have to address the study of complex systems so that they develop agency to make decisions on socioscientific complex problems humankind is facing. Complex health problems such as pandemics and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) underline the need to look at health issues from a systemic One Health (OH) approach, but this approach is still scarce in education. This study explores preservice elementary teachers’ (PSTs´) agency and systems thinking (ST). The research data consisted of the actions for addressing AMR individually written by 58 PSTs at the beginning and at the end of a sequence of activities about AMR from the OH approach. The analysis was based on the diversity of components and the complexity of causal relationships in the writings, so as the sense of personal and collective responsibility towards the action proposed. Results show that the PSTs initially referred only to actions in the human health dimension, and that 28% of the actions proposed were incorrect for addressing AMR. At the end, PSTs proposed more diverse actions on a OH view, established more complex causal relationships and showed a greater sense of responsibility. Still, the results show gaps in the development of causal relationships that take into account the prospective view and in the development of agency.
Keywords: Action, agency, antimicrobial resistance, One Health, preservice teachers, systems thinking
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