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- Christenson, Nina, 1975-, et al.
(författare)
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Science and Language Teachers’ Assessment of Upper Secondary Students’ Socio-scientific Argumentation
- 2017
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Ingår i: International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1571-0068 .- 1573-1774. ; 15:8, s. 1403-1422
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Researchers and policy-makers have recognized the importance of including and promoting socioscientific argumentation in science education worldwide. The Swedish curriculum focuses more than ever on socioscientific issues (SSI) as well. However, teaching socioscientific argumentation is not an easy task for science teachers and one of the more distinguished difficulties is the assessment of students’ performance. In this study, we investigate and compare how science and Swedish language teachers, participating in an SSI-driven project, assessed students’ written argumentation about global warming. Swedish language teachers have a long history of teaching and assessing argumentation and therefore it was of interest to identify possible gaps between the two groups of teachers’ assessment practices. The results showed that the science teachers focused on students’ content knowledge within their subjects, whereas the Swedish language teachers included students’ abilities to select and use content knowledge from reliable reference resources, the structure of the argumentation and the form of language used. Since the Swedish language teachers’ assessment correlated more with previous research about quality in socioscientific argumentation, we suggest that a closer co-operation between the two groups could be beneficial in terms of enhancing the quality of assessment. Moreover, SSI teaching and learning as well as assessment of socioscientific argumentation ought to be included in teacher training programs for both pre- and in-service science teachers.
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| 2. |
- Berglund, Teresa, 1976-, et al.
(författare)
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The implementation of education for sustainable development in Sweden : Investigating the sustainability consciousness among upper secondary students
- 2014
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Ingår i: Research in Science & Technological Education. - : Routledge. - 0263-5143 .- 1470-1138. ; 32:3, s. 318-339
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Sustainable development (SD) is a complex idea, based on environmental, economic and social dimensions. In line with SD, education for sustainable development (ESD) is an approach to teaching that combines cognitive and affective domains and aims to build empowerment abilities.Purpose: The purpose of this article is to investigate effects of the implementation of ESD in Sweden, in terms of developing students’ sustainability consciousness (SC). Two groups of students were included: one was from schools with a profile of ESD and the other one was from comparable schools without explicit ESD-profile.Sample: A total of 638 students from upper secondary schools (grade 12) in science-related or social science-related programs participated in the study.Design and methods: A procedure was created for the selection of schools considered to be the most active in using an ESD approach as well as comparable schools with no explicit ESD approach. During spring 2013, the students responded to a questionnaire based on sustainability knowingness, attitudes and behaviors within the environmental, economic and social dimensions of SD that together constitute the concept of SC. Data were analyzed using SPSS software.Results: The results indicate that there are significant differences in SC between students from schools that teach with an ESD approach compared to students from regular schools. Furthermore, a significant difference between the two groups of students was found in the underlying economic dimension of SC. No significant differences were found in the environmental and social dimensions of SC.Conclusions: Although the results show that ESD-profiled schools have effect on students' SC, the effects are relatively small. Therefore, the effects and nature of the implementation of ESD are discussed.
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| 3. |
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| 4. |
- Christenson, Nina, 1975-, et al.
(författare)
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Science and Swedish language teachers’ assessment of upper secondary students’ socioscientific argumentation
- 2015
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Swedish curricula, as well as researchers and policy makers worldwide, have recognized the importance of promoting and including sociscientific argumentation in science education to promote scientific literacy. However, to teach socioscientific argumentation in not an easy task for science teachers and among the difficulties is the assessment practice. In this small-scale qualitative study, we have, investigated and compared how science and Swedish language teachers, participating in a SSI-driven project, assess students’ written argumentation about Global warming. The Swedish language teachers have a long tradition of teaching and assessing argumentation and therefore it is of interest to identify possible gaps between these two groups. The results indicate that the science teachers focus on students’ ability to reproduce content knowledge within their respective subject that they have been teaching. The Swedish language teachers include students’ abilities to select and use content knowledge from trustable reference resources, in addition to the structure of the argumentation and the form of the language used. In fact, the Swedish language teachers’ assessment correlates more to previous research about quality in socioscientific argumentation and we suggest that a closer co-operation between these two groups can be beneficial to enhance the quality of assessing students’ socioscientific argumentation.
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| 5. |
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| 6. |
- Christenson, Nina, 1975-, et al.
(författare)
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A cross-disciplinary approach to teaching socioscientific issues : A study of the co-operation between language and science teachers teaching about global warming
- 2014
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- To combine the teaching of scientific concepts with the challenging problems of socioscientific issues (SSI) has been shown to be effective on engaging students in discussions and in developing students’ skills in decision-making and critical thinking. Research has revealed that teaching SSI in science education is a challenging task for science teachers alone suggesting a co-operation with teachers of the humanities, proposing that these teachers might be better at managing debates and other pedagogical methods related to a SSI driven instruction. However, to our knowledge no one has yet investigated the outcomes of a co-operation between language teachers, who regularly in their courses teach topics like argumentation, debate and how to write an argumentative text, and science teachers. Hence, the aim of our study is to investigate how the co-operation of teachers from different disciplines (language and science teachers) can contribute to upper secondary school students’ argumentation skills about global warming. A total of ten teachers from the subjects of Swedish (mother tongue), English, biology, physics and chemistry will participate in this study together with two classes of science major students in their first year of upper secondary school, which they teach. Data will be collected from both the teachers by interviews at the end of the teaching sequence and from students making a pre- and post-test of written argumentation about global warming, as well as interviews. Since this study is an ongoing project, we are still collecting data. We foresee that we will find that the teachers as well as the students can provide us with insights on how they perceive a cross-disciplinary teaching with focus on SSI, and also that we will be able to follow some progression in students argumentation through the pre- and post-test. Our findings on the learning outcome and how teachers and students perceive a cross-disciplinary teachers’ cooperation on SSI will be presented at the ERIDOB-conference. We believe that the results from our study will provide valuable insights on how to develop future SSI-teaching by using a cross-disciplinary approach and how the involvement of language teachers may be of help to the science teachers in doing this.
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| 7. |
- Olsson, Daniel, et al.
(författare)
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Young people and their integrated understanding of sustainable development
- 2013
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study aims to investigate young peoples’ knowledge, attitudes and behaviors as well as their integrated understanding of sustainable development (SD). Comparisons will be made between two groups of Swedish primary (6th graders) and secondary (9th graders) pupils. A common description of SD often includes the interrelationship between the environmental, economic and social dimensions. Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is described as a framework in teaching that will incorporate all three of these dimensions. To integrate the different dimensions in everyday-life and decision making for a sustainable future requires new ways of thinking, valuing and acting. Hence, the integrated understanding of SD in terms of knowledge, also have to be reflected in pupils’ attitudes and behavior, which is investigated in this study. The research design is based on a quantitative approach using a survey instrument consisting of items with Likert-type scales. The survey instrument is developed by considering the dimensions of SD as they are described by UNESCO. During spring 2013, data will be gathered from pupils in the 6th-grade level (n=1000) and 9th-grade level (n=1000). Half of the pupils in each grade are from schools having supporting structures that help them in the ESD approach and the other half are from regular schools without an explicit ESD approach. At the time of ESERA conference the data analyzes will be completed and preliminary results can be presented. For analysis one way ANOVA and T-test will be used. We will highlight whether there are differences between primary and secondary pupils’ knowledge, attitudes and behavior in the dimensions of SD or not, and secondly whether there are differences between primary and secondary school pupils’ recognition of the three dimensions as part of SD. Implications for the implementation of ESD will be discussed.
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