The 2019 published report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem (IPBES) reveals that the decline in species and habitats induced by human activities is continuing. School students still have difficulties to understand the meaning of biodiversity and the consequences of its loss. The underlying assumption of…

Students' argumentation skills are considered a central tool to contribute to scientific controversies in the science classroom. Scientific controversies of social relevance (socioscientific issues; SSI) are subject to multiple viewpoints that are often rooted in diverse disciplines. However, the relationship between issue familiarity and…

Professional societies and institutes have stressed the importance of a dialogue between scientists and the public over the past decades. Especially the life sciences include many highly relevant research topics pertaining not only to scientific progress but also to decision-making in society. Surprisingly, few educational researchers and…

Student interest in plants is lacking. Therefore, we investigated potential drivers of situational interest in cultivated plants and interactions between different dimensions of interest, i.e. topic, context and learning activity. A total of 462 high school students (14-17 years of age) rated two sets of questionnaire items combining eight plants…

Our paper analyses the genetics and gene technology contents of German (Bavarian) and Portuguese biology textbooks, as fields common in science-technology-society-environment (STSE) issues. Our aim was to determine the extent to which textbooks from both countries contribute to students' understanding of the STSE issues and therefore to students'…

This paper reflects the theory and practice of societal-oriented science education in the past and present of German science teaching. Starting from a quite unique German justification for more thorough societal-oriented science education and some historical reflections a model for socio-scientific issues-based science teaching will be presented.…

People use many different products made from plastics every day. But conventional plastics such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC) do not always have a good reputation in society at large. Bioplastics such as thermoplastic starch (TPS) promise to be better alternatives but are they really better than conventional plastics? This article presents a new…

Given the rapid development of modern biotechnology, attention to socioscientific issues in educational contexts is crucially important to support students in becoming responsible citizens. The authors' research focused on the impact of discussing socioscientific issues during biology lessons under 3 different treatments (teacher guided, student…