Promoting engineering students' social responsibility and willingness to act on socioscientific issues

BACKGROUND

Despite increasing awareness of the importance of promoting the social responsibility of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) professionals, few intervention programs have been developed to enhance the social responsibility of college students or adults in the STEM fields. In this paper, we introduced a new instructional program, called ENACT (engage, navigate, anticipate, conduct, and take action) and examined whether the program increased the social responsibility among safety engineering students (N = 46) recruited from a university located in a southern metropolitan area of South Korea.

RESULTS

In the ENACT program, the college students selected and explored socioscientific issues (SSIs) of their own interest then autonomously engaged in scientific and engineering group projects spanning a semester where they developed solutions to the SSIs and shared them with their communities. At the conclusion of the intervention in this study, they displayed an increased social responsibility regarding the consideration of societal needs and demands, civic engagement and services, and participation in policy decision-making. Social responsibility scores measured after the intervention (post-test) correlated with students' willingness to voluntarily participate in projects involving SSIs. In addition, the intervention effects were more pronounced for the students who initially had medium and low social responsibility scores.

CONCLUSIONS

We have shown that social responsibility can be nurtured by systemic instructional approaches, and increased social responsibility can lead to greater commitment to resolving SSIs. Mastering engineering content knowledge and skills is the key element of engineering curricula. However, we are compelled to incorporate social responsibility into the STEM curriculum. We believe that the ENACT model contributes toward this end.

Irish secondary school science teachers' perspectives on addressing the COVID-19 crisis as socioscientific issues

Development of scientific literacy is a crucial aim of science education across the globe and research suggests that this can be realized through student exploration of socioscientific issues. While the COVID-19 crisis, emergency school closures and restrictions to in-class teaching, had negative impacts on teaching and on student learning and wellbeing, it also presents an opportunity to explore authentic socioscientific issues. This research explores teachers' perspectives on addressing the COVID-19 crisis as socioscientific issues in secondary science education. This qualitative study surveyed 266 Irish secondary school science teachers about their experiences during the COVID-19 crisis. Thematic analysis was used to identify the reasons why teachers did and did not address the COVID-19 crisis as SSI. These findings were triangulated with findings from follow-up interviews. The majority of teachers in this study addressed the COVID-19 crisis as SSI. The COVID-19 crisis was explored within the curriculum, through project work and research, and through classroom discussion. Teachers described four barriers to exploring the COVID-19 crisis with their students: The COVID-19 crisis was not part of the curriculum; The lack of F2F contact made judging students' reactions challenging; There was already too much focus on the COVID-19 crisis in everyday life and concerns over student wellbeing while discussing the sensitive topic of the COVID-19 crisis. Teachers noted that addressing the COVID-19 crisis led to benefits to student learning, health, wellbeing and hygiene.

Shifting the Teaching Beliefs of Preservice Science Teachers About Socioscientific Issues in a Teacher Education Course

The purpose of this study was to investigate how 22 preservice science teachers' (PSTs') beliefs about teaching socioscientific issues (SSI) changed after experiencing SSI instruction and reflection from both a learner's perspective and a teacher's perspective during a 12-week initial teacher education course. The study also explored the learning experiences associated with these changes. This study was conducted in Hong Kong, where the science, technology, society and environment (STSE) framework has been integrated into the secondary science curriculum but no SSI instruction is provided. Data were collected through learning tasks completed by the participants: (a) curriculum designs (pre-, mid- and post-course), (b) lesson plans (mid- and post-course) and (c) weekly reflective journals. Six profiles characterising teaching beliefs about SSI emerged from the data analysis. Qualitative analysis showed that the teaching beliefs of the PSTs had shifted from the traditional view that SSI should not be covered in science education to embracing SSI teaching. Three illustrative cases were used to capture key learning experiences and explore how these had led to a change in beliefs over time. These cases explained how PSTs' reflection on the why, what and how of teaching SSI to students can shape their beliefs about teaching SSI. The results have implications for the development of a closer alignment between PST beliefs and the SSI paradigm.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10763-021-10177-y.

Trust in the time of corona: epistemic practice beyond hard evidence

The spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) is undoubtedly one of the most extraordinary challenges in recent history. Amidst this global crisis, various controversies have been emerging about how to manage the virus, ranging from whether face masks should be required as a preventive measure to whether hydroxychloroquine is an appropriate treatment. There has been a barrage of contradictory claims related to these issues. However, in many cases, it is not possible for an individual to wait until consensus is reached before deciding on a course of action. Meanwhile, to avoid misplacing trust, trust must be well grounded. Conventional school science largely focuses on the trustworthiness of data and evidence, rather than that of the people making scientific claims. This failure to consider the human factor renders conventional school science inadequate for helping students make informed judgements about granting trust. Drawing on the literature in epistemic practice, this paper highlights four epistemic processes potentially useful for students to ground their trust, including (1) identifying whether recognition from peer reviewers has been obtained; (2) examining the credentials of those who claim expertise; (3) determining the level of expert consensus; and (4) identifying possible sources of bias. Through critical reflection on events related to the Covid-19 pandemic as examples, this paper examines how these epistemic processes inform judgement about the trustworthiness of people in terms of their competence and motives. The discussion highlights the need to develop students' capacity to identify expertise/ credentials, the nature of journals and of organisations when trust is assigned. This paper offers a frame for science educators on guiding students to place trust as a part of their decision-making process. The capability would be relevant to contexts beyond the Covid-19 pandemic.