Suchergebnisse

The conservation of biodiversity is an important socio-scientific issue, often regarded as a precondition to sustainable development, and the foundation for citizens' understanding of conservation issues can be laid down in formal school education.
This research focuses on decision-making discussions about biological conservation issues among 131 15-16 year old students, to address two main research questions:
1. Can peer-group decision-making discussions, in a normal science lesson setting, help develop students' personal reasoning in relation to conservation issues? 2. Are there features common to high-quality discussions about conservation which might be readily identified by classroom teachers?
Findings indicate the positive value of students taking part in these short decision-making discussions, guided by a structured framework, as part of their normal science classroom activities. Students increase their quality of personal reasoning, and modify their solutions to the issues. The study begins to uncover features about students, as individuals and as members of discussion groups, which can be associated with high quality decision-making about conservation issues, and which teachers might realistically identify. The work calls for the need to cultivate these features, and integrate them appropriately with learning about the scientific concepts that underpin the theory and practice of conservation management. Such integration will facilitate the development of teaching strategies for dealing effectively with the complex topic of biological conservation; not just in terms of science content, but also in terms of how students are expected to engage with the issues.

Concept mapping is a technique used to provide a visual representation of an individual's ideas about a concept or set of related concepts. This paper describes a concept mapping tool using a photograph association technique (CoMPAT) that is considered to be a novel way of eliciting children's ideas. What children at 11 years of age know about particular concepts related to microbial activity is presented and discussed in relation to the effectiveness of CoMPAT as a tool to draw out their ideas. It is proposed that this tool could be used to explore ideas about this and other science concepts from children in other age groups, and where language may be a barrier to participation.

There are only a few studies about how primary school students engage in socio-scientific discussions. This study aims to add to this field of research by focusing on how 9–10-year-olds in Sweden and England handle climate change as a complex environmental socio-scientific issue (SSI), within the context of their own lives and in relation to society at large. It focuses on how different interpretative repertoires were used by the students in discussions to legitimise or question their everyday lifestyles. They discussed four possible options that a government might consider to help reduce carbon dioxide production. Six main repertoires were identified: Everyday life, Self-Interest, Environment, Science and Technology, Society and Justice. The Everyday life repertoire was used when students related their discussion to their everyday lifestyles. Science and technology-related solutions were offered to maintain or improve things, but these were sometimes rather unrealistic. Arguments related to environment and health frequently appeared to have a superior status compared to the others. Findings also highlighted how conflicts between the students were actually productive by bringing in several perspectives to negotiate the solutions. These primary school students were, therefore, able to discuss and negotiate a complex real-world SSI. Students positioned themselves as active contributors to society, using their life experiences and limited knowledge to understand the problems that affected their everyday lives. Honing these skills within a school science community of practice could facilitate primary students' engagement with SSIs and empower them as citizens.

This study identifies and categorizes the discursive repertoires used by 9-10 year old children in Sweden and England during discussions about the socio-scientific issue of global warming. School science is a community of practice where student identities and discourses can be expressed and developed, and the research focuses on how the use of repertoires is related to the identities the students express in their discussions. It explores what repertoires become important in the discussions, which identities the students express, and what differences there are between children's discussions in Sweden and England. The children discussed four possible options that a government might consider to help reduce global warming. Findings indicate that children in both countries use a range of similar repertoires when discussing global warming. When these repertoires are in conflict with each other, students have to 'renegotiate' their own identities. Socio-economic status appears to have an effect on the intensity and depth of argument in the Swedish schools, whereas in the English schools the level and quality of argument seemed to be more closely connected to children's familiarity with a discursive classroom environment. Young children seem capable of applying a variety of arguments that are logical to them according to the repertoire(s) they employ, but we must encourage changes to pedagogical practice that enable all children to engage in such socio-scientific discussions.

This qualitative study examines the pedagogical potential that a Cartography of Controversy (CoC) approach has in enabling secondary school students to unravel the complexity of socioscientific issues and to communicate about them. The aim was to examine the types of knowledge and the ways in which students approached uncertainty when asked to explore the badger-cattle controversy in England using the CoC approach. A learning sequence focusing on mapping controversies was designed and implemented across three lessons. Data collected from the students' cartographies and the audio-recordings of their group discussions during the mapping tasks showed that students were able to use scientific, economic, cultural, social, moral and political types of knowledge in their exploration of the controversy. Identifying tensions between different types of knowledge and becoming aware of their own uncertainties about the issue through posing and recording questions allowed students to identify where uncertainty existed within the SSI explored. The CoC approach allowed affordances for understanding the SSI depending on students' framing of the task (familiarisation, exploration, consolidation) and on the cartography's function as an observation, visualisation, and reflection tool at different stages of the learning sequence. Implications for further research and practice for developing students' socioscientific reasoning are discussed.