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…

The ability to make evidence-based decisions, and hence to reason on questions concerning scientific and societal aspects, is a crucial goal in science education and science communication. However, science denial poses a constant challenge for society and education. "Controversial science issues" (CSI) encompass scientific knowledge…

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…

Decision-making in socioscientific issues (SSI) constitutes a real challenge for both biology teachers and learners. The assessment of students' performances in SSIs constitutes a problem, especially for biology teachers. The study at hand was conducted in Germany and uses a qualitative approach following the research procedures of grounded theory…

This paper focuses on the views of 16-17-year-old science students from England, Germany, Hong Kong and Sweden on whale hunting, and their perceptions of the views of their international counterparts. The students were all provided with the same decision-making task, discussed the issue in small groups and then presented their views on video,…