Current Research and Trends in Socioscientific Issues

Presented to:

Marmara UniversityGazi University

Middle East Technical UniversityTURKEY

Dana L. Zeidler

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Academic Experiences…• 1974 AAS - Agronomy & Conservation

(Natural Sciences) State University of New York, Alfred

• 1974 BS – Biology / Earth Science, State University of New York, Buffalo

• 1976 MS – Science Education, Syracuse University, NY

• 1982 PhD – Science Education, Syracuse University, NY

Unraveling the moral elements – the beginning of SSI

• 1976 Coursework in Philosophy& Sociology, (Cultural Foundations -Thomas F. Green) Developmental Psychology, Science Education

• 1978 Scoring Workshops (Larry Kohlberg & Marvin Berkowitz), Harvard University, MA

• 1979 Bioethics and Biology at Auburn Correctional Facility, NY via ISDP of Syracuse University, NY

• 1980 Physical Science, APW Middle School, NY

• 1982 Dissertation, Syracuse University, NY(Identifying Mediating Factors of Moral Reasoning in Science Education*)

*Central Claim of Dissertation

“It is of pedagogical importance for educators to know what factors above and beyond intellectual development contribute to how one reasons about different moral problems. Educators would then be able to maximize the conditions that give students the opportunity to attend to those factors and subsequently, assess their moral ideologies.”

Socioscientific Issues

SSI movement arises from a conceptual framework that unifies development of moral and epistemological orientations of students and considers the role of emotions and character as key components of science education.(Sadler, 2002; Zeidler & Keefer, 2003; Zeidler & Sadler, 2008; Zeidler, Sadler, Applebaum & Callahan, 2008).

What are Socioscientific Issues?

SSI are by nature, controversial and ill-structured in their make up – but require evidence-based reasoning.Deliberate use of scientific topics that require students to engage in dialogue, discussion and argumentation.Tend to have implicit and explicit ethical components and require some degree of moral reasoning. Formation of virtue / character as a long-range pedagogical goal is often associated with SSI.

Character• The shortest and surest

way to live with honor in the world, is to be in reality what we would appear to be; all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice and experience of them. – Socrates

L. Dignus - worthy / worth

Dignity - worthinesshigh repute, honorstatelinesscalm, self possessionself respectdecorum

Roman Catholic Virtues: (Socialization Continued…)

The Roman Catholic Church recognizes the seven capital virtues as opposites to the seven capital sins. According to Dante's The Divine Comedy the sins have an

order of greatness, and the virtues a respective order of greatness as well. Sin VirtueLust (inappropriate desire) Chastity (purity)Gluttony (over-indulgence) Moderation (self-

restraint)Greed (avarice) Generosity (vigilance)Sloth (laziness) Zeal (enthusiasm)Wrath (anger) Meekness (composure)Envy (jealousy) Charity (giving)Pride (vanity) Humility (humbleness)

Vanitas with her mirror. (Painting by Titian, c.1515) Dante shown holding a copy of The Divine Comedy, next to the entrance to Hell,

the seven terraces of Mount Purgatory and the city of Florence, with the spheres of Heaven above. (Fresco by Michelino, c. 1450)

Arete (excellence)Arete (Greek) "goodness" or "excellence" of any

kind. In its earliest appearance in Greek this notion of excellence was bound up with the notion of the fulfillment of purpose or function; the act of living up to one's full potential. The moral excellence or arete of a person or thing was virtue.

Hence: Particular excellence depended upon fittingness of fulfillment to purpose.

Note: The root of the word is the same as 'aristos', the word which shows superlative ability and superiority. The ancient Greeks applied the term to anything: for example, the excellence of a chair, the excellence of a horse, and the excellence of a man.

In the Greek, Arete is construed as "habitual excellence."

The Process of Normation(The formation of Conscience)

• It is something practiced at all times.

• The virtue of perseverance is needed for all and any virtues since it is a habit of character and must be used continuously in order for any person to maintain oneself in virtue.

What is Character?

Character is bound by a set of psychological characteristics

that collectively influence the ability and inclination to do what is right – to function morally.

Character is our moral maturity and commitment to doing the right thing regardless of the personal cost.

Character involves the will to respond to events according to values and principles rather than to appetites, urges, whims, or impulses.

Optimality

Optimal: (1) feasible --------------------^^^-------------------- (2) idealBrute Facts

1) We cannot have moral education without the functional presence of the holy.

2) Moral argument is ineffective in establishing conscience because engaging in moral argument presupposes existence of conscience.

3) Prudence is more primitive, natural, than morality.4) If the primacy of prudence is the foundation for the formulation of

conscience, then an education in prudence must be part of moral education.

5) Moral education must include an education of emotions.6) Moral education cannot exist unless it includes the cultivation of a

social memory. “Only because we are first creatures of prudence can we subsequently

become creatures of conscience.” T.F. Green

Pedagogical Outcomes of Learning Traditions

A Socioscientific View of Scientific Literacy

“Core Beliefs” Protective Belt Separating Students from

Larger Community (Social & Environmental)

Confronting Core Beliefs

Students often dismissed data that was in conflict with core beliefs or failed to meet criteria of personal experience Perceived value and relevance of information was based upon its fit with personal experience When compelled to defend opinions, students included core beliefs and personal experiences Students were surprised when reliable sources provided conflicting claims

How will reasoning and discouse skills and abilities be achieved?

ExperienceExperienceExperienceExperienceExperienceExperienceExperienceExperienceExperience

Research on SSI & NOS Issues

Tangled Up in Views: Beliefs in the Nature of Science and Responses to Socioscientific Dilemmas

(Zeidler, Walker, Ackett & Simmons, 2002)

Purpose: To investigate the relationships between students’ conceptions of the nature of science and their reactions to evidence that challenged their beliefs about socioscientific issues.

Tangled Up in Views: Beliefs in the Nature of Science and Responses to Socioscientific Dilemmas(Zeidler, Walker, Ackett & Simmons, 2002, Science Education)

• Significant difference b/w pre-posttest beliefs/convictions about a SSI scenario (n=82, p =.0001)

• Significant difference b/w high school and college students’ degree of confidence in “official research news reports” favoring high school students (n=81, p=.06)

• Nascent relationship between certain NOS views (social / cultural influences and empirical evidence) and students’ patterns of ethical reasoning on SSI identified.

Research on SSI & NOS IssuesSadler, Chambers & Zeidler (2004)

Students decisions regarding SSI is analogous to decisions engaged by scientists regarding the justification of scientific knowledge in that both processes require the use of rational discourse and invoke value judgments and common sense.

Students tend to distort whatever data, evidence or knowledge claims are available to them for the purpose of supporting a predetermined viewpoint with respect to the issue under consideration.

Research on SSI & NOS Issues (cont’d.)

Students rated articles according to which had more “scientific merit” but in determining which articles they found to be most convincing, many (40%) selected articles which most complemented their own personal beliefs independent from its status of having scientific merit.

10% of the students could exhibit complete data recognition, description and explanation;

43% showed data recognition and partial description; 30% data recognition only; 17% exhibited total data confusion.

Research on SSI & NOS Issues (cont’d.)

Advancing Reflective Judgment Through Socioscientific Issues

(Zeidler, Sadler, Applebaum & Callahan, 2008)

• Purpose: to explore possible relationships between socioscientific issues instruction and students’ development of reflective judgment (epistemological development).

Reflective Judgment Model and the Connection to SSI

• The domain of reflective judgment entails a set of assumptions about the status of knowledge and the reciprocal justification of beliefs concerning that knowledge as people reason about ill-structured problems.

• SSI are by definition ill-structured problems that are complex, open-ended, often contentious dilemmas utilizing students’ informal reasoning that involves the generation pros and cons for multiple courses of actions, the evaluation of evidence to support claims, and moral sensitivity as consensus for an issue or position is constructed.

Uncertainty is a given in both true SSI and in true reflective judgment where informal reasoning has its day.

Epistemological Beliefs in Reflective Judgment

(1)Nature of Knowledgea. View of Knowledgeb. Right versus Wrong Knowledgec. Legitimacy of Differences in Viewpoints

(2)Nature of Justificationa. Concept of Justificationb. Use of Evidencec. Role of Authority

Emphasis on Dissonant Evidence and Epistemological Probes

1) I would now like each of you to restate your position to one another about to what extent you agree with the statement; “Animals should be used for research”—and explain the reason for your position. [Justification/Clarification Probe]

2) If you had to convince (the other person) that your view is right, what evidence of proof would you say or show to persuade him/her? [Justification/Evidence Probe]

3) Could (the other person) prove that you were wrong? Why? Why not? [Alternative Viewpoint/Alternative Theory Probe]

4) Could more than one point of view on this matter be right? Please explain. [Epistemological Probe]

5) How does either scientific knowledge or opinion play a role in each of your positions? [Epistemological/Evidence/Personal & Sociocultural Probe]

Summary of Reflective Thinking Stages

Level Epistemological Justification

Pre-Reflective Knowledge is fixed with high degree of certainty and usually derived from direct experience and/or culturally accepted authority.

Quasi-Reflective Ill-structured problems contain knowledge claims that, while based upon evidence, possess problematic

uncertainties, may be ambiguous and/or idiosyncratic.

Reflective Judgments concerning SSI, while tentative, can be evaluated on the merit of the available data, internal coherence

of that data, and are open to reevaluation in light of new evidence.

Guiding NOS Theory of SSI Instruction

1) Science-in-the-making and the role of consensus in science 2) Science as one of several social domains3) Descriptive and normative statements4) Demands for underpinning evidence5) Scientific models as context-bound6) Scientific evidence7) Suspension of belief8) Scrutinizing science-related knowledge claims.

(Kolstø, 2001)

Pedagogical Characteristic of an SSI Classroom

• Show respect for students’ assumptions• Scaffold ill-structured issues with students throughout their

activities/lessons • Make available resources that illuminates issues from several perspectives.• Create many opportunities for students to analyze others’ points of

view for their evidentiary adequacy and to develop and justify their own points of view about controversial issues.

• Teach students strategies for systematically gathering data, assessing the relevance of the data, evaluating data sources, and making interpretive judgments based on the available data.

• Help students explicitly address issues of uncertainty in judgment-making and to examine their assumptions about knowledge and how it is gained.( Developed/modified from King & Kitchener, 2002)

Pedagogical Framework for SSI Study.

Comparison Groups

Treatment Groups

Approach Traditional Approach where content topics follow textbook chapter topics.

Socioscientific Issues Approach; Content related course topics embedded with SSI.

Teaching methods Lecture, lab, discussion of content related concepts.

Focus on argumentation and discourse, as well as traditional methods.

Nature of Science Explicit activities & connections made.

Explicit activities & connections made.

Instrumentation & Scoring• Prototypic Reflective Judgment Interview (PRJI)

(King & Kitchner, 1994; 2004).

• Topics: Chemical Additives, Religion and Science, & Familial Ties to Alcoholism)

• Random sample of ten students per class (initially n = 40)

• 5 randomly selected transcripts scored by 3 raters: inter- rater agreement of 100% on the dominant stage and over 90% for the less dominant stages. (e.g.: 4-3-5)

Results: Paired Samples t-test for the Use of Socioscientific Issues on Reflective Judgment.

t df Significance (2-tail)

Control preControl post

0.45 9 0.666

Treatment preTreatment post

2.67 12 0.020

Non Parametric Comparison Wilcoxon test - The ranked mean scores for both control and treatment groups showed the same direction of changes as the parametric data with a significant difference observed for the SSI treatment group (p= .09, alpha ≤.10), with no discernable differences for the control group.

Effect Size .74 (moderately large) - mean of treatment group was at the 78th percentile of the control group; distribution of scores indicated a nonoverlap of 45% in the two distributions.

Results: Qualitative Key Indicators of Reflective Judgment on Religion & Science Issue

Pretest Key Indicator Posttest Key Indicator Researchers’ Interpretation

Case (Student) 4. R: So how did you come to hold that point of view?S: I was brought up Christian and I really believe that and it is basically what I base my life on, so it says that in the Bible so that is why I believe it to be true. And it says that it was created, so.

R: How did you come to hold that point of view?S: I have actually researched this before and I have seen both sides, obviously the scientific side that states that we evolved from lower animal forms in school, cause that’s basically what they teach… and I have studied the scientific side of the religious point of view that says the world was created and coming now to have more credibility in the scientific world and people are getting into it and researching it more.

These responses indicate a shift from pre-reflective thought to reflective thought. The pre-test response simply indicated that she was raised a Christian so that is why she believes what she does. The post-test response indicates that she has studied and evaluated evidence from both views. (It is important to note that a given stance is not associated with reflective thought; rather it is process by which the student came hold that stance.)

Results: Contextual Factors of Epistemological Reasoning

• Example: Two students were rated as reflective thinkers at the completion of the study on the scenarios of Chemical Additives and Genetic Determination of Alcoholism.

• However, they remained quasi- reflective in their reasoning in regard to their epistemological positions and concept of justification for knowledge on the Religion and Science issue.

• Core beliefs are highly entrenched personal beliefs, -- defend against counter viewpoints and reinforced by like-minded personal opinions and dogmatic authority. Hence, the contextual embededness of subject matter would seem to influence the quality of epistemological stances.

Finding: epistemological reasoning is not content-free but is influenced by situational (and by extension, educational) contexts.

Confronting Contextual Factors Students ability to evaluate claims was improved when scientific concepts were related to relevant SSI.

Scientific concept understanding was improved when attached to relevant SSI.

When presented with contemporary SSI, students were able to transfer concept understanding from one context to another context.

Summary of Key Points

Reciprocal relationships between more advanced stages of reflective judgment and more sophisticated views of NOS:

• Both require epistemological frameworks that conceptualize and justify knowledge via a process of inquiry.

• Both are based on data-driven evidence.

• Both allow for the probabilistic nature of data.

• Both possess an openness to reevaluation.

Contextualizing Nature of ScienceInstruction in Socioscientific Issues

(Eastwood, Sadler, Zeidler, Lewis, Amiri and Applebaum, 2012)

Within Group Pre- to Post-instructional Changes in VNOS Results

Content Group p-Value SSI Group p-Value Empirical 0.005 0.003Tentative 0.007 0.006Creative 0.006 0.001Socially/culturallyembedded 0.050 0.009Theory and law 0.009 0.007Models 0.030 0.060

SSI Scaffolding

Contextualizing Nature of ScienceInstruction in Socioscientific Issues

(Eastwood, Sadler, Zeidler, Lewis, Amiri and Applebaum, 2012)

• Research on NOS supports the conclusion that most learners do not have adequate understanding of NOS.

• However, there is evidence to suggest that explicit-reflective approaches to NOS instruction can promote students’ development of more informed NOS understanding.

• SSI provide excellent contexts for explicit-reflective NOS instruction in their numerous opportunities to exemplify aspects of NOS.

Cross-Cultural Comparisons of Epistemological Beliefs on Socioscientific Issues

Zeidler, Herman, Ruzek, Sheng & Linder, (In Press, JRST)

RQ1 What cultural patterns may exist among ethical issues and patterns of reasoning relative to conceptualizations of distributive justice as students respond to selected socioscientific issues?

RQ 2 What cultural patterns exist in terms of how students evaluate and prioritize scientific evidence related to socioscientific issues in varied contexts?

RQ 3 What relationships may exist between cultural identity and students’ epistemological beliefs about science across selected international communities of students?

Coding of Data• a-priori scoring rubric for scoring items and forming taxonomies of responses. • inductive analysis -four rounds/ four researchers scoring 40 subsets of the data. • independently scoring 10 data sets per round 97% inter-rater agreement. • potential conflicts eliminated resulting in virtually 100% inter-coder agreement for all items. • original 40 data sets were reevaluated after consensus of the coding scheme. • every set of remaining 10 data sets always had 2 data sets in common among all four raters.

ResultsQualitative Taxonomies of SSI Justification

1) Fairness (temporal, random selection, degree of illness)

2) Pragmatism (survivability, cost and value, wasting organ)

3) Emotive Reasoning (caring, empathy, value judgments)

4) Utility (means to an end, benefit to society)

5) Theological (religious overtones)

Summary and Implications

Commonalities in Epistemological Orientations • In many ways, our findings show a degree of epistemological congruence among the samples of students from these countries.

• These results would lead us to infer that, at the very least, indirect support exists for the notion that students engage in a type of socioscientific reasoning that transcends certain contextual features of SSI.

Threshold Model of the Interaction Between Epistemological Sophistication and

Socioscientific Reasoning

Summary of Key Points• Reflective Judgment Model is guided by a cognitive-

developmental progression. An equivalent model has not typically or explicitly informed NOS research.

• SSI instruction may have the added benefit of embedding NOS into a scientific context that is, de facto, theory laden, driven by data, as well as socially and culturally embedded.

• SSI approach is that opportunities are afforded for the exploration of character -- consistent with a humanistic approach to science education.

• SSI show much promise in engaging students and advancing their understanding of the kind of practical reasoning inherent in ill-structured problems, issues or dilemmas. It is in this vein that our notion of “functional scientific literacy” may be best understood

Character Considerations(KOREAN RESEARCH)

• By participating in carefully designed, socially responsible activities, students will hopefully develop or have reinforced such qualities as reliability, trustworthiness, dependability, altruism, and compassion.

• Our recent research has shown that teaching within the context of SSI can increase students’ moral sensitivity and reflective judgment, thus contributing to overall moral development and NOS.

Sociocultural Considerations

• In the process of cultivating scientifically literate citizens, our aim is to foster the formation of a collective social conscience.

• The goal is to instill the desire to consistently hold one’s actions up for internal scrutiny (i.e. reflective reasoning) -- which is a fundamental feature of conscience.

Summary of Key Points: Character Education

To the extent that a general goal for science educators is for their students to employ reflective judgment on SSI as they evaluate evidence, to “reason well” as it were, and to exercise this skill most effectively with due consideration to a sense of social justice and personal caring, the pursuit of character certainly seems like a tenable part of science education. (Zeidler & Sadler, 2008)

Teacher Impediment to Success • Content knowledge• Pedagogical knowledge• Pedagogical content knowledge• Ability to change teaching method• Understanding and acceptance of NOS• Personal experiences• Teaching experiences• Persistence• Effective Higher-Order Questioning Strategies

Competition to Scientific Understanding

• Advertisements• Pseudoscientific claims• Fictional data• Rumors• Misconceptions• Core beliefs• “Old school” teaching methods

Implications for Science (Teacher) Education The fatal flaw held by many teachers is their own

pedagogical belief that concepts can be taught using sufficient explanations and tidy analogies that will then magically alter the students’ core beliefs.

For students to change their epistemology beliefs

about scientific data, the educative experience must be personal and relevant.

Teachers must accept that they are challenging a

“belief system” instead of simply teaching new information.

Final Thoughts Neo-Kohlbergian research has lead those

concerned with moral reasoning to realize that simply possessing the reasoning competence to make decision consistent with available structure does not ensure performance at that level across all contexts.

If we as science educators wish to be cultivate future citizens and leaders that care, serve the community, and provide leadership for new generations, then we have a moral imperative to delve into the realm of virtue, character, and moral development.

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