Today, Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) is a popular socio-scientific issue and views on this issue directly shape people's behaviors. This study aims to investigate university students' views about GMOs. A total of 200 university students from different faculties of a state university participated in the study. For data collection purposes…

Science and technology centers continue to emerge as hubs for building climate change and resiliency literacy in communities around the United States. What's less clear, however, is how these institutions foster and sustain climate action based on this acquired literacy. The Science Museum of Virginia developed, delivered, and evaluated climate…

Laypeople are increasingly confronted with scientific controversies, as science concerns many aspects of everyday life. In the present study, we investigated how epistemic beliefs regarding the uncertainty of knowledge (i.e. uncertainty beliefs) and invested mental effort during task processing contribute to how individuals evaluate scientific…

Currently there is little guidance given to teachers in selecting focal issues for socio-scientific issues (SSI)-based teaching and learning. As a majority of teachers regularly collaborate with other teachers, understanding what factors influence collaborative SSI-based curriculum design is critical. We invited 18 secondary science teachers to…

The aim of the present study is to explore pre-service elementary teachers' evaluations of the evidence and models and their positions on a socio-scientific topic, namely genetically modified organisms (GMOs), after evaluating them through Model Evidence Link (MEL) diagrams. The findings of this study show that the participants mostly constructed…

The integration of socioscientific issues (SSI) in science education calls for emphasizing dialogic classroom practices that include students' views together with multiple sources of knowledge and diverse perspectives on the issues. Such classroom practices aim to empower students to participate in decision-making on SSI. This can be accomplished…

Teachers do not simply deliver a set curriculum, but carry out classes based on practical knowledge, including their values, beliefs, and experiences. Therefore, it is meaningful to investigate the practical knowledge of teaching among teachers in terms of orientation, structure, and content in order to understand the teacher's knowledge,…

This article describes a teaching experience at an year 8 classroom (students aged 12-13) in a state secondary school in London, UK that aimed at widening learning about nature of science (NOS) with the input from the field of Global History of Science (HOS), which looks at science as a product of material and cognitive exchanges, appropriations…

In this study, applications based on socioscientific subject-oriented science, technology, society and environmental education were carried out. The aim of the study is to determine the views of pre-service science teachers, who are engaged with the applications, about science, technology and society and to determine whether these views are…

Global warming and climate change are serious issues facing humanity at present and education needs to focus on including informed-decision in classroom practices. The conceptual framework used in this study has provided interconnections that influence beliefs and understandings in providing a knowledge base for making…

Socioscientific issues (SSI) have been found to improve scientific literacy skills among K-12 students. Elementary preservice teachers (PSTs), however, are reluctant to implement SSI due to a lack of confidence with content knowledge concerning SSI and pedagogical abilities. Existing research focuses on helping PSTs overcome these concerns through…

Learning democratic participation as future citizens is an important goal for science education for all students. To take part in debates and decision-making involving socioscientific issues, such as sustainability, students need to become aware of different positions and dilemmas regarding such issues. This study seeks to understand how…

In modern society, people are expected to make scientific decisions and rational actions over a range of personal and social problems. There have been a number of studies on students' and adults' decision-making over socio-scientific issues under the name of scientific literacy. In this study, we investigated the social and cultural backgrounds of…

We report on findings from a qualitative study of Australian scientists whose work brings them into contact with the public. This research sought to understand how a school science curriculum could better represent the work of scientists today. We discuss the views expressed by our participant scientists about the importance of openness and…

Current science education efforts emphasise the need to train students to understand the nature of scientific work. In geosciences, training students to understand how science works does not only promote their interest and community engagement in the field, but also has the potential to promote awareness and ethics. However, instructional…