The STEM Literacy in the Classroom to Enable Societal Change project provided professional development for 24 mathematics, science, and science-technology-engineering-and-mathematics (STEM) teachers of grades 6-12. The project included a 2-week summer institute and one follow-up Saturday during the fall semester, for a total of 54 contact hours.…

The purpose of this study is to elaborate on a sample activity in socio-scientific issues. For this purpose, an activity that lasted for 80 minutes (2 periods) was developed. The implementation process is reported in this paper. The first dimension of the implementation process begins with the tracking of videos that will reflect two different…

Purpose: One area of science that will increasingly influence our society is biotechnology. An increasing number of modern biotechnological applications have provoked consideration of the ethical and social issues; therefore, it is important that the public is well-informed about them. Formal education in upper-secondary schools should help…

The aims of this paper are twofold. First, we present, justify, and characterise an instrument for analysing students' argumentative reasoning developed from Walton's ideas. Then, from the analysis of students' argumentative discussion about a socio-scientific controversy, we identify the advantages and disadvantages of using the instrument. The…

This study investigates how affective dispositions influencing students' moral judgments can both shape their response to individual enjoyment from learning ethics (IE-LE) and predict their individual enjoyment from learning socio-scientific issues (IE-LSSI). Tenth-grade participants from southern Taiwan (n = 770) responded to survey items that…

This research explored the characteristics of students' activities and their artifacts during their participation in climate change club projects and investigated the impacts of the club project participation on students' ecological citizenship. Climate change club projects were developed to help students understand climate change, investigate…

This study aims to develop a training workshop to promote the in-service science teachers' ability to teach the topic of Force and Motion to grade 10 students by using the Science-Technology-Society (STS) approach and explore its impacts on students' scientific argumentation patterns. The research methodology was a case study with one…

The purpose of this study was to test a hypothesized model that specified direct and indirect effects of textual and individual factors on readers' ability to integrate information about sources and content when reading multiple conflicting texts on a controversial socio-scientific issue. Using a path analytic approach with a sample of 140…

The complex environmental challenges humanity faces require citizens who are scientifically and environmentally literate. Many environmental education programs are situated in the field where students are immersed in their learning. These field-based activities are engaging but may lack opportunities for students to develop critical thinking and…

Ocean Acidification (OA) is an emerging environmental issue that is still largely unknown to the public and in its infancy in terms of educational strategies. OA teaching material should address the specific challenges that educators face while building learners' understanding of OA. The objective of this study is two-fold. First, we identified…

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…

We explored the COVID-19 pandemic as a context for learning about the role of science in a global health crisis. In spring 2020, at the beginning of the first pandemic-related lockdown, we worked with a high school teacher to design and implement a unit on human brain and behavior science. The unit guided her 17 students in creating studies that…

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…

This study aimed to determine science teachers' decisions about the socio-scientific issue of nuclear-power plant and how these decisions are given within the framework of the decision making process. The design of this research is based on a case study. 22 teachers who worked in the middle schools in the city center of the province of Sinop were…

Innovative education approaches include citizen science projects that allow students to participate in locally relevant scientific work, connecting content to the real world. Global collaboration provides students with a broader perspective on local issues, allowing students to become more globally aware.