A perennial goal of science educators is to develop functional scientific literacy in their students, especially those who will not become professional scientists. This article provides an example of implementing a socioscientific issues approach in an undergraduate environmental science course that enables students to develop the knowledge,…

Socially engaged engineering provides for student learning of the design, analysis, and practices of engineering as well as the ways that engineering is situated in sociocultural contexts. This paper provides a conceptual framework regarding socially engaged engineering for K-8 educators, researchers, and curriculum designers. The framework…

New introductions to invasive mosquitoes, Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus, increase the risk for vector-borne diseases such as dengue, chikungunya, and Zika in the United States. Tracking these new introductions is more important than ever. This lesson plan focuses on the collection of mosquito larvae and pupae before the onset of summer with a…

Confronted by myriad interconnected societal challenges, this paper asks: what kind of pedagogy does justice to the experience and challenge of living in a complex world? Departing from a critical reading of a preparative-logic to education, this paper emphasises students' entangledness: more-or-less consciously, students are uniquely shaped-by…

During the unprecedented and rapid spread of the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) around the World, students have been concerned about the disease as much as the rest of the global community. As a real-world problem, the COVID-19 pandemic with many different debatable facets has social and scientific components, impacts society, and shows…

Human rights issues can be topics of conflict, resistance, and indifference; thus, these issues are seldom broached in traditional college STEM courses. In this article, I share process, content, and sources used to introduce college students to the biology of the singularity of race and the biology of sexual identity. One or two class meetings on…

Aim/Purpose: This study aimed to develop a model for using social media content to promote 3D thinking of sustainability among students in integrated Mathematics, Language, Arts, and Technology (MLAT) classrooms. Background: Social media is one of the most relevant platforms among students of the 21st century to the extent that connecting it to…

Embedding science learning in real-world issues is a research-based way to generate student enthusiasm, interest, and motivation for science. The authors advocate teaching secondary science in the context of "socio-scientific issues" (SSI). SSI are authentic societal challenges with connections to science, such as climate change,…

Until thirty-five years ago, climate change was almost exclusively a topic of domain scientists and deeply serious hobbyists. It was only discussed in science journals and at academic colloquia. Therefore, it should not be at all surprising that many fundamental questions persist about how to teach students about climate change science, including…

Over the past several decades it has become increasingly important to understand nature of science (NOS) for scientific literacy in science education. Science education researchers have suggested using socio-scientific issues to create a context for that purpose. The present fast-moving coronavirus or COVID-19 pandemic as a socio-scientific issue…

This article describes an early childhood lesson that integrated science, technology, art, social studies, math, and language. The authors' students compared robots, programmed and created stories with robots, and became robot-inventors. They also imagined how their robot-creations might impact the world--a core idea related to Science, Technology…

The science and engineering practices in the "Next Generation Science Standards" seek to engage students in complex tasks including planning and carrying out investigations or engaging in argument from evidence. However, such tasks often require students to effectively collaborate. While our students get better at working together in an…

Socioscientific issues, issues that center on the intersection between scientific and social problems in real-world contexts, are valuable tools to use in science instruction due to their association with gains in scientific literacy, argumentation skills, and content knowledge. However, due to their complex nature, crafting instruction using…

As every elementary science teacher knows, children sometimes ask questions that can not easily be answered by science. The "messiness" of these questions may stem from the fact that scientific understanding is often incomplete and ever changing, a situation that can lead students (and the public) to be confused about the information…

In this article, first Toby Tyler describes how using Twitter to engage the community and to pursue the ICE principle (Introduce, Consolidate, and Extend) to enhance learning has brought his school community closer together. Then, Emma Vanstone highlights how schools can draw on support for engaging children with science at home by using social…