SEE-SEP: From a separate to a holistic view of socioscientific issues

The significance of SSIs has been perceived in recent decades, and science educators are encouraged to embed SSIs in science teaching. However, what outcomes could be achieved through SSIs instruction becomes important for teachers. In this section, the main roles of SSIs in science education are presented through a literature review. We hope the clarification of these roles could help teachers to foresee the outcomes while considering adopting SSIs in their science teaching.

Role 1: Beyond STS to the achievement of scientific literacy

Following the rise of global SSIs, like energy issue and global warming, it is not hard to notice the significance of addressing the strengths and limits of science and technology in school education and in society. In line with this, Science-Technology-Society (STS) is an important notion which has been conveyed for more than 50 years (Chang, Yeung, & Cheng, 2009; Sadler, 2004b).

STS certainly is the most widespread and long-lived movement to date for stressing the inter-complexity of science, technology and society. In the Forty-sixth Yearbook regarding Science Education in American Schools, the National Society for the Study of Education/NSSE (1947) has pointed out that science instruction in general education should have broad integrative elements and students need to know the relationship of science with problems of human society. The Yearbook Committee also expressed the notion that scientific developments also had the potential to cause harm to society, and the public needs to have the knowledge and skills to make rational judgments about those risks associated with science (DeBoer, 2000). However, the concept of STS was largely unnoticed until the 1970s. Scientific literacy was more strongly identified with science in its social context throughout the 1970s and early 1980s (DeBoer, 2000). Gallagher (1971) even mentioned that, for future citizens in a democracy, understanding the interrelations of science, technology, and society may be as important as understanding the concepts and processes of science. Then in 1982, the NSTA (National Science Teachers Association) board of directors adopted a statement entitled “Science-Technology-Society: Science Education for the 1980s.” (DeBoer, 2000) More recently, the last big promotion of STS is in Project 2061, which argues that individuals ought to know that science, mathematics, and technology are human enterprises, and people need to understand the implications of their strengths and limitations (AAAS, 1989).

Along with the above-mentioned development of STS, STS teaching has been documented as a powerful approach to understanding content knowledge, promoting learning interests, and appreciating science, technology and society (Aikenhead, 1994; Aikenhead & Ryan, 1992; Yager & Tamir, 1993). However, although a lot of merits have been proposed for conducting an STS approach, some researchers have argued that STS has limitations, such as the lack of a theoretical framework (Sadler, 2004b; Shamos, 1995; Zeidler, Sadler, Simmons, & Howes, 2005). Zeidler et al., (2005) specially indicated that SSIs are conceptually related to STS education, but SSIs are connected to a more coherent sociological framework considering psychological and epistemological growth. Accordingly, the role of SSIs goes beyond STS.

Instead of the STS notion, SSIs have been indicated as suitable contexts to promote scientific literacy in the globalized world of today (Chang & Chiu, 2008; Driver et al., 2000; Hughes, 2000; Kolstø, 2001; Zeidler, Osborne, Erduran, Simon, & Monk, 2003; Zeidler et al., 2002). There is a plethora of definitions of scientific literacy (e.g. De Boer, 2000; Laugksch, 2000; Murcia, 2009). One of the most influential authors in the scientific literacy field is Jon Miller, who regards scientific literacy as a multidimensional construct. Miller (1983) defined scientific literacy as being constructed from three main aspects: (1) an understanding of the norms and methods of science (i.e. the nature of science); (2) an understanding of key scientific terms and concepts (i.e. science content knowledge); and (3) an awareness and understanding of the impact of science and technology on society. In addition, scientific literacy is focused on enhancing the life quality of individuals as well. Thomas and Durant (1987) pointed our that scientific literacy could improve the ability of an individual to cope with a science- and technology-dominated society, such as help making personal decisions concerning diet, smoking, vaccination, screening TV programs or issues regarding safety in the home and at work. No matter which definition of scientific literacy we follow, there is no doubt that SSIs could serve as a context for students to achieve scientific literacy.

From the earlier work by Klostø (2001), he disclosed that SSI contexts could offer eight specific content-transcending topics under the four main headings of science as a social process, limitations of science, values in science, and critical attitudes, to achieve the important goal of “science for citizenship.” Furthermore, in a recent paper related to SSI, Sadler and Zeidler (2009) indicated that there are invariant practices across many SSI contexts including (1) appreciating the complexity of SSI, (2) analysing issues through multiple perspectives, (3) recognizing the need for additional information and engaging necessary inquiries, and (4) possessing skepticism in reviewing information, and those invariant practices ought to be concerned in promoting scientific literacy. According to these statements, we can see that promoting SSIs is a continuous movement to accomplish the goal of scientific literacy. The way to achieve the goal of scientific literacy through SSIs is elaborated in the following sections.

Role 2: Transferring content knowledge and skills to real contexts

As mentioned before, SSIs include global and/or local issues emergent currently. In other words, SSIs are the issues debated and of concern in our daily life. To date, it seems to be a common consensus that SSIs could serve as a scenario to cultivate and evaluate students’ skills of informal reasoning and informal argumentation through students’ science communication (Chang & Chiu, 2008; Means & Voss, 1996; Sadler & Zeidler, 2005b; Voss, Perkins, & Segal, 1991; Zeidler et al., 2003; Zohar & Nemet, 2002); and also, whether students could transfer the content knowledge to make argumentation has also been addressed (Chang & Chiu, 2008; Ekborg, 2008; Jallinoja & Aro, 2000; Keselman, Kaufman, & Patel, 2004; Wynne, Stewart, & Passmore, 2001). Although some studies have revealed that the application of scientific concepts or content knowledge in SSI argumentation bears no relation to the quality of arguments (Kuhn, 1991; Means & Voss, 1996; Perkins, Faraday, & Bushey, 1991; Sadler & Donnelly, 2006), as science educators, we maintain the hope that students could make decisions based upon scientific concepts and evidence, or in other words, to think scientifically. Accordingly, SSIs could help students to transfer the content knowledge and skills of argumentation to a real context.

Figure 1 shows the relationship among school education, SSIs and the goal of scientific literacy. According to Millar and Osborne (1998), a scientifically literate individual could be simply defined as a person who understand the nature of science (NOS), science-technology-society (STS), and scientific concepts/terms. Through the context of SSIs, students need to know the impact of scientific and technological developments on society, which is similar to the STS idea as mentioned before (Chang et al., 2009; Sadler, 2004b; Zeidler et al., 2005). In addition, the skill of informal argumentation developed from SSIs could benefit student’s ability to think scientifically or make better decisions (Chang & Chiu, 2008; Means & Voss, 1996; Sadler & Zeidler, 2005b; Voss et al., 1991; Zeidler et al., 2003; Zohar & Nemet, 2002) and to be aware of the limitations of science and technology, which corresponds to the notion of NOS (Zeidler et al., 2002). Further, via discussing or perceiving SSIs, students can also come to know scientific concepts and terms developed from science and technology (Chang & Chiu, 2008; Ekborg, 2008; Jallinoja & Aro, 2000; Keselman et al., 2004; Wynne et al., 2001). Taking the energy issue as an example, when students need to argue about whether their government should build up more nuclear plants, they need to not only have the knowledge related to energy and chemistry, but also possess the ideas regarding the impact on society and environment. Then students ought to have the skills of argumentation to provide reasons and make a claim accompanied by the considerable pros and cons of their arguments. Accordingly, we could say that SSI is a suitable context to help students transfer content knowledge and skills to their life in the modern age. The same notion has been pointed out by researchers worldwide (Driver et al., 2000; Hughes, 2000; Zeidler & Keefer, 2003; Zeidler et al., 2003; Zeidler et al., 2002).

Figure 1. The relationship between school education, SSIs and scientific literacy.

Role 3: Enhancing decision making and critical thinking

Aiming at democratization, science educators have also indicated the need and relevance of, and emphasized the importance of, decision-making in science teaching. The ability to make informed decisions on science- and technology-related social issues has been considered an important aspect of achieving scientific literacy worldwide (Aikenhead, 1985; Chang & Chiu, 2008; Eggert & Bögeholz, 2009; Lee, 2007; Millar & Osborne, 1998; MOE, 1998; Sadler, 2004a; Zeidler et al., 2005). It has been revealed that personal value or belief is very often involve in an individual’s argumentation about SSIs. However, the SSI context could help students, in a systematic way (i.e. argumentation instruction), to engage in argumentation or decision-making. For instance, students need to decide whether smoking should be banned in all restaurants (Lee, 2007); whether they want to consume GMO (Chang & Chiu, 2008; Ekborg, 2008); whether the government should build a new road in their school area (Patronis et al., 1999), and so on. These issues are all close to students’ personal lives, and furthermore, students might have been confronted with those issues in person, which encourages them to engage more in thinking critically and then making informed decisions. Findings also support the assertion that the ability to evaluate evidence and think critically could be cultivated well through a SSI context, such as smoking, food consumption, global warming, pollution and diversity, the use of mobile phone and so on (Albe, 2008; Kolstø et al., 2006; Lee, 2007; Maloney, 2007).

Role 4: Promoting science communication

As mentioned before, the skills of informal reasoning and informal argumentation are often connected to SSI instruction or discussion. Through instruction on argumentation, students could learn how to make a good argument while dealing with SSIs. The design of instruction could, for instance, present models of argumentation suggested in the science education literature and let students work on arguing about SSIs according to each model (Chang, 2007; Erduran, Simon, & Osborne, 2004; Osborne, Erduran, & Simon, 2004); design an inquiry-based curricular unit to promote student discourse and debate on SSIs (Walker & Zeidler, 2007); use role-play to have students perform their opinions (Albe, 2008; Simonneaux, 2001; Simonneaux & Simonneaux, 2009), and so forth. Except from instructional design, very often, the ways to evaluate students’ reasoning and argumentation about SSIs have been conducted through interviewing students (Sadler & Zeidler, 2005b), students’ written reports (Chang & Chiu, 2008; Kolstø et al., 2006), group discussions (Kelly, Crawford, & Green, 2001), on-line chat (Walker & Zeidler, 2007), or a combined approach (Kelly & Chen, 1999; Kelly, Druker, & Chen, 1998; Walker & Zeidler, 2007). Through these approaches, students also have the opportunity to be trained and present their ideas explicitly and systematically, thus promoting their abilities in communicating science.

Role 5: Inducing interest in learning science

More and more evidence indicate that SSI-based instruction could enhance students’ learning interests. The reasons could be categorized as follows: (1) the method used in SSI instruction, like role-play and debate approaches (Albe, 2008; Simonneaux, 2001), which could engage students more in learning; (2) the multifaceted character of SSIs, which could present science in the broader contexts of society, economy and so on (Sadler, 2004a); (3) the ill-structured, controversial and undetermined features of SSIs could bring a greater participant interest, such as that students have been shown to be more interested in the moral consequences of genetic engineering (Kuhn, 1991; Sadler & Zeidler, 2004; Zohar & Nemet, 2002); (4) the authentic feature of SSIs, which make students motivated and interested in learning science when the learning context involves issues that they might confront in their everyday lives (Lee, 2007; Zeidler, Sadler, Applebaum, & Callahan, 2009). Taken together, Sadler (2009a) provided a great deal of evidence from reviewing former studies to support the idea that SSI-related interventions are interesting from the perspective of students, and hence, these interventions are motivating contexts for learning. From reviewing work, Sadler even found that students who have participated in an SSI-related course were more likely to pursue science studies at the college level (Sadler, 2009a). In addition, female students’ higher interests in SSI-related issues have also been revealed, which shows that an SSI-based curriculum could be seriously considered for promoting females learning interests towards science and technology (Chang et al., 2009).

Role 6: Providing cross-disciplinary concepts

As discussed above, the multifaceted character of SSIs could contribute to promoting students’ learning interests. The different perspectives from students’ personal values or the related evidence were found to be involved in various degrees while students dealt with different attributes of SSIs (Chang & Chiu, 2008). When the SSI is more related to environmental or ecological issues, students could frame their arguments through different points of view with regard to social, ecological, economical subject areas etc. (Patronis et al., 1999). Furthermore, moral and ethical concerns are discovered as aspects students could think about while dealing with genetic engineering (Sadler & Zeidler, 2004), thus a substantial amount of research indicates the importance of embedding moral and ethical perspective into SSIs instruction today (Sadler, 2004b; Sadler & Zeidler, 2009; Zeidler et al., 2005; Zeidler et al., 2009). Sadler and his colleagues have proposed that examining issues from multiple perspectives is one of four important aspects emerging from practicing SSIs (Sadler, Barab, & Scott, 2007). Also, SSIs are connected to the skills of argumentation, in which students need to learn how to think alternatively (Erduran et al., 2004; Kuhn, 1991; Zeidler, 1997), or consider the pros and cons of their arguments (Chang & Chiu, 2008).

Here, the basic argument for the role of providing cross-disciplinary concepts is not only the involvement of knowledge from science (i.e. the subjects of biology, chemistry and so forth), economy, society, environment, and an ethical/moral point of view, but also the skills of argumentation. Except from the content knowledge domain, other various subject areas embedded in SSIs found by students’ reasoning and argumentation are described further in the following section.