Internationally, there are calls for students to be able to use their scientific understandings to make informed decisions about the world in which they live. Using a mixed methods case study design, this study investigated the impact of behaviours and strategies used by two early career science teachers who taught argumentation about a…

Socio-scientific issues demonstrate the relationship between science, technology, and society by considering currently unresolved questions. The problem of plastics and their pollution is just one example with important implications for the planet. The aim of this paper is to revisit socio-scientific issues and see them as a way of developing…

In recent years, countries have focused specifically on improving thinking skills in their science education programs. One of the science lesson methods that can be used to activate the use of thinking processes is scientific scenarios. In this direction, the aim of the study is to investigate the effect of socioscientific subject-based…

In this study, the effects of the STEM activities integrated with socio-scientific issues on students' 21st century skills were investigated. In this research, nested mixed design was used. The study group of this research consisted of 16 middle school students who studied in the seventh grade of a public school in an eastern province of Turkey.…

Improving the ability of young people to construct arguments about controversial science topics is a desired outcome of science education. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the impact of an argumentation intervention on the socioscientific issue of climate change with Year 10 students in a disadvantaged Australian school. After…

Scientific literacy reflects an understanding of science as it relates to use of science in real-world contexts. Socioscientific issues (SSIs) are real-world problems that are complex in their acknowledgement of social as well as scientific aspects of the problem and are well-suited to support scientific literacy objectives. Because of their…

This study explores the views of Indonesian junior high school pre-service science teachers (PSTs) towards teaching based on socio-scientific issues (SSIs). Questionnaires were analyzed qualitatively and descriptively. The PSTs (N=62) acknowledged that student competencies ranging from personal to socially relevant skills as well as character…

This study investigated the implementation of a place-based socioscientific issue curricular unit designed to improve rising middle school students' abilities to think critically about the pros and cons of hydraulic fracturing and engage in evidence-based reasoning on whether the practice should be banned in Massachusetts. Forty-three rising…

This survey explored Indonesian science teachers' experience and perceptions toward science teaching that is based on socio-scientific issues (SSIs). The participants were asked whether or not they already used corresponding practices in their own teaching and whether they experienced any challenges in implementing SSI-based pedagogies. Further…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to assess the socioscientific issue (SSI) method as a way of improving seventh graders' nutrition know-how on dietary supplements (DS), and to describe how students experience learning nutritional issues through the SSI method. Design/methodology/approach: Participants were seventh graders from three different…

The present research aimed to analyse the perception of science teachers on socio-scientific issues and teaching them. The study group of the research consists of 22 science teachers (14 females, 8 males) working in 7 secondary schools in Sinop, who were determined according to the convenience sampling method. The case study as one of the…

Can science teaching contribute to developing skills for managing uncertainty towards the future and projecting imagination forwards? If so, how? In this paper, we outline an approach to 'teach the future' through science education. In the first part, we describe a framework that has been constructed to orient the design of teaching modules…

The global scale of climate change may seem beyond many high school students' comprehension. To complicate matters, climate change has emerged as a political issue that pits candidates, neighbors, and sometimes teachers and students against each other (Kahan 2015). The "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS Lead States 2013) call on…

Science and technology are argued to have controversial consequences on individuals, societies and environments. Citizens' socio-political activism seems paramount to address these consequences. This paper reports on Venezuelan students' socio-political actions on socioscientific issues highly relevant to them. It particularly focuses on students'…

This study aims to explore students' argumentation and decision-making relating to an authentic socioscientific issue (SSI)--the problem of environmental toxins in fish from the Baltic Sea. A multi-disciplinary instructional module, designed in order to develop students' skills to argue about complex SSI, was successfully tested. Seven science…