ABSTRACT

Background

An overarching goal of school science education is to prepare young people for a rapidly changing and complex world. Middle school science students need more than a basic understanding of science concepts in preparation for further study. Rather, they need the skills to question and evaluate evidence and make decisions about complex scientific issues that impact themselves, society and the environment.

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to test a three-phase methodology for developing socioscientific issues that can be used in the classroom to engage middle school students, support their decision-making skills, enable them to construct an argument and use rational reasoning patterns.

Sample

The context of this research was four Australian Year 7 (12 years old) classrooms where students were studying the topic of water use.

Design and Methods

This exploratory study tested a three-phase methodology that included: (1) development of the socioscientific issues in consultation with experienced science teachers; (2) trialling with 68 Year 7 students in three diverse schools with teacher support and writing frames; and, (3) testing with 52 different Year 7 students from two schools to measure argument quality.

Results

The findings showed that all students, including those with low literacy levels, were able to engage with the socioscientific issues. The majority of students also were able to construct an argument that could be assessed for argument quality based on structure, type of reasoning and types of categories. Factors that facilitated engagement with the issues were personal relevance, collaborative whole-class discussion, scaffolding, and explicit literacy support.

Conclusion

The conclusion was that the three-phase methodology for developing socioscientific issues was effective in the contexts in this study. The findings also supported further testing of the methodology in other contexts.

中文翻译：

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测试一种发展社会科学问题的方法，以提高中学生的论证和推理能力

摘要

背景

学校科学教育的首要目标是让年轻人为快速变化和复杂的世界做好准备。中学理科学生需要的不仅仅是对科学概念的基本了解，为进一步学习做准备。相反，他们需要质疑和评估证据并就影响自己、社会和环境的复杂科学问题做出决定的技能。

目的

本研究的目的是测试一个三阶段的方法论，以开发可用于课堂的社会科学问题，以吸引中学生参与，支持他们的决策技能，使他们能够构建论点并使用理性推理模式。

样本

这项研究的背景是四个澳大利亚 7 年级（12 岁）的教室，学生们在那里学习用水的主题。

设计和方法

这项探索性研究测试了一个三阶段的方法，其中包括：（1）与有经验的科学教师协商发展社会科学问题；(2) 在有教师支持和写作框架的三所不同学校对 68 名 7 年级学生进行试验；(3) 对来自两所学校的 52 名不同的 7 年级学生进行测试，以衡量论点质量。

结果

调查结果表明，所有学生，包括识字水平低的学生，都能够参与社会科学问题。大多数学生还能够构建一个可以根据结构、推理类型和类别类型评估论点质量的论点。促进参与这些问题的因素是个人相关性、全班协作讨论、脚手架和明确的识字支持。

结论

结论是，发展社会科学问题的三阶段方法在本研究的背景下是有效的。研究结果还支持在其他情况下进一步测试该方法。