Science technology and society (STS)
Goals of STS
The key goals of STS are: *An interdisciplinary HI approach to science education, where there is a seamless integration of economic, ethical, social and political aspects of scientific and technological developments in the science curriculum. *Engaging students in examining a variety of real world issues and grounding scientific knowledge in such realities. In today's world, such issues might include the impact on society of:STSE education
There is no uniform definition for STSE education. As mentioned before, STSE is a form of STS education, but places greater emphasis on the environmental consequences of scientific and technological developments. In STSE curricula, scientific developments are explored from a variety of economic, environmental, ethical, moral, social and political (Kumar and Chubin, 2000 & Pedretti, 2005) perspectives. At best, STSE education can be loosely defined as a movement that attempts to bring about an understanding of the interface between science, society, technology and the environment. A key goal of STSE is to help students realize the significance of scientific developments in their daily lives and foster a voice of active citizenship (Pedretti & Forbes, 2000).Improving scientific literacy
Over the last two decades, STSE education has taken a prominent position in the science curricula of different parts of the world, such as Australia, Europe, the UK and USA (Kumar & Chubin, 2000). In Canada, the inclusion of STSE perspectives in science education has largely come about as a consequence of the ''Common Framework of science learning outcomes, Pan Canadian Protocol for collaboration on School Curriculum (1997)Goals
In the context of STSE education, the goals of teaching and learning are largely directed towards engendering cultural and democratic notions of scientific literacy. Here, advocates of STSE education argue that in order to broaden students' understanding of science, and better prepare them for active and responsible citizenship in the future, the scope of science education needs to go beyond learning about scientific theories, facts and technical skills. Therefore, the fundamental aim of STSE education is to equip students to understand and situate scientific and technological developments in their cultural, environmental, economic, political and social contexts (Solomon & Aikenhead, 1994; Bingle & Gaskell, 1994; Pedretti 1997 & 2005). For example, rather than learning about the facts and theories of weather patterns, students can explore them in the context of issues such as global warming. They can also debate the environmental, social, economic and political consequences of relevant legislation, such as theCurriculum content
Since STSE education has multiple facets, there are a variety of ways in which it can be approached in the classroom. This offers teachers a degree of flexibility, not only in the incorporation of STSE perspectives into their science teaching, but in integrating other curricular areas such as history, geography, social studies and language arts (Richardson & Blades, 2001). The table below summarizes the different approaches to STSE education described in the literature (Ziman, 1994 & Pedretti, 2005):Summary table: Curriculum content
Opportunities and challenges of STSE education
Although advocates of STSE education keenly emphasize its merits in science education, they also recognize inherent difficulties in its implementation. The opportunities and challenges of STSE education have been articulated by Hughes (2000) and Pedretti & Forbes, (2000), at five different levels, as described below: Values & beliefs: The goals of STSE education may challenge the values and beliefs of students and teachers—as well as conventional, culturally entrenched views on scientific and technological developments. Students gain opportunities to engage with, and deeply examine the impact of scientific development on their lives from a critical and informed perspective. This helps to develop students' analytical and problem solving capacities, as well as their ability to make informed choices in their everyday lives. As they plan and implement STSE education lessons, teachers need to provide a balanced view of the issues being explored. This enables students to formulate their own thoughts, independently explore other opinions and have the confidence to voice their personal viewpoints. Teachers also need to cultivate safe, non-judgmental classroom environments, and must also be careful not to impose their own values and beliefs on students. Knowledge & understanding: The interdisciplinary nature of STSE education requires teachers to research and gather information from a variety of sources. At the same time, teachers need to develop a sound understanding of issues from various disciplines—philosophy, history, geography, social studies, politics, economics, environment and science. This is so that students’ knowledge base can be appropriately scaffolded to enable them to effectively engage in discussions, debates and decision-making processes. This ideal raises difficulties. Most science teachers are specialized in a particular field of science. Lack of time and resources may affect how deeply teachers and students can examine issues from multiple perspectives. Nevertheless, a multi-disciplinary approach to science education enables students to gain a more rounded perspective on the dilemmas, as well as the opportunities, that science presents in our daily lives. Pedagogic approach: Depending on teacher experience and comfort levels, a variety of pedagogic approaches based on constructivism can be used to stimulate STSE education in the classroom. As illustrated in the table below, the pedagogies used in STSE classrooms need to take students through different levels of understanding to develop their abilities and confidence to critically examine issues and take responsible action. Teachers are often faced with the challenge of transforming classroom practices from task-oriented approaches to those which focus on developing students' understanding and transferring agency for learning to students (Hughes, 2000). The table below is a compilation of pedagogic approaches for STSE education described in the literature (e.g. Hodson, 1998; Pedretti & Forbes 2000; Richardson & Blades, 2001):Projects in the field of STSE
Science and the City
STSE education draws on holistic ways of knowing, learning, and interacting with science. A recent movement in science education has bridged science and technology education with society and environment awareness through critical explorations of place. The project Science and the city, for example, took place during the school years 2006-2007 and 2007-2008 involving an intergenerational group of researchers: 36 elementary students (grades 6, 7 & 8) working with their teachers, 6 university-based researchers, parents and community members. The goal was to come together, learn science and technology together, and use this knowledge to provide meaningful experiences that make a difference to the lives of friends, families, communities and environments that surround the school. The collective experience allowed students, teachers and learners to foster imagination, responsibility, collaboration, learning and action. The project has led to a series of publications: *Alsop, S., & Ibrahim, S. 2008. Visual journeys in critical place based science education. In Y-J. Lee, & A-K. Tan (Eds.), Science education at the nexus of theory and practice. Rotterdam: SensePublishers 291–303. *Alsop, S., & Ibrahim, S. 2007. Searching for Science Motive: Community, Imagery and Agency. Alberta Science Education Journal (Special Edition, Shapiro, B. (Ed.) Research and writing in science education of interest to those new in the profession). 38(2), 17–24. Science and the city: A Field Zine One collective publication, authored by the students, teachers and researchers together is that of a community zine that offered a format to share possibilities afforded by participatory practices that connect schools with local-knowledges, people and places.Tokyo Global Engineering Corporation, Japan (and global)
Tokyo Global Engineering Corporation is an education-services organization that provides capstone STSE education programs free of charge to engineering students and other stakeholders. These programs are intended to complement—but not to replace—STSE coursework required by academic degree programs of study. The programs are educational opportunities, so students are not paid for their participation. All correspondence among members is completed via e-mail, and all meetings are held via Skype, with English as the language of instruction and publication. Students and other stakeholders are never asked to travel or leave their geographic locations, and are encouraged to publish organizational documents in their personal, primary languages, when English is a secondary language.See also
* Citizen Science, cleanup projects that people can take part in. *Notes
Bibliography
*Aikenhead, G.S. (2003) STS Education: a rose by any other name. In ''A Vision for Science Education: Responding to the world of Peter J. Fensham'', (ed.) Cross, R.: Routledge Press. *Aikenhead, G.S. (1994) What is STS science teaching? In Solomon, J. & G. Aikenhead (eds.), ''STS Education: International Perspectives in Reform''. New York: Teacher's College Press. *Alsop, S. & Hicks, K. (eds.), (2001) ''Teaching Science''. London: Kogan Page. *Bencze, J.L. (editor) (2017). ''Science & technology education promoting wellbeing for individuals, societies & environments''. Dordrecht: Springer. *Bingle, W. & Gaskell, P. (1994) Science literacy for decision making and the social construction of scientific knowledge. ''Science Education'', 78(2): pp. 185–201. *Bodmer, W., F.(1985) ''The Public Understanding of Science''. London: The Royal Society *Durant, J., R., Evans, G.A., & Thomas, G.P. (1989) The public understanding of science. ''Nature'', 340, pp. 11–14. *Fensham, P.J. (1985) Science for all. ''Journal of Curriculum Studies'', 17: pp415–435. *Fensham, P.J. (1988) Familiar but different: Some dilemmas and new directions in science education. In P.J. Fensham (ed.), ''Developments and dilemmas in science education''. New York: Falmer Press pp. 1–26. *Gaskell, J.P. (1982) Science, technology and society: Issues for science teachers. ''Studies in Science Education'', 9, pp. 33–36. *Harrington, Maria C.R. (2009). An ethnographic comparison of real and virtual reality field trips to Trillium Trail: The salamander find as a Salient Event. In Freier, N.G. & Kahn, P.H. (Eds.), Children, Youth and Environments: Special Issue on Children in Technological Environments, 19 (1): age-page http://www.colorado.edu/journals/cye. *Hodson, D. (1998)''Teaching and Learning Science: Towards a Personalized Approach''. Buckingham: Open University Press *Hodson, D. (2003) Time for action: Science education for an alternative future. ''International Journal of Science Education'', 25 (6): pp. 645–670. *Hughes, G. (2000) Marginalization of socio-scientific material in science-technology-society science curricula: some implications for gender inclusivity and curriculum reform, Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 37 (5): pp. 426–40. *Kumar, D. & Chubin, D.(2000) ''Science Technology and Society: A sourcebook or research and practice''. London: Kluwer Academic. *Millar, R. (1996) Towards a science curriculum for public understanding. ''School Science Review'', 77 (280): pp. 7–18. *Osborne, J. (2000) Science for citizenship. In ''Good Practice in Science Teaching'', (eds.) Monk, M. & Osborne, J.: Open University Press: UK. *Pedretti, E. (1996) Learning about science, technology and society (STS) through an action research project: co-constructing an issues based model for STS education. ''School Science and Mathematics'', 96 (8), pp. 432–440. *Pedretti, E. (1997) Septic tank crisis: a case study of science, technology and society education in an elementary school. ''International Journal of Science Education'', 19 (10): pp. 1211–30. *Pedretti, E., & Forbes (2000) From curriculum rhetoric to classroom reality, STSE education. ''Orbit'', 31 (3): pp. 39–41. *Pedretti, E., Hewitt, J., Bencze, L., Jiwani, A. & van Oostveen, R. (2004) Contextualizing and promoting Science, Technology, Society and Environment (STSE) perspectives through multi-media case methods in science teacher education. In D.B Zandvliet (Ed.), ''Proceedings of the annual conference of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching'', Vancouver, BC. CD ROM. *Pedretti, E. (2005) STSE education: principles and practices in Aslop S., Bencze L., Pedretti E. (eds.), ''Analysing Exemplary Science Teaching: theoretical lenses and a spectrum of possibilities for practice'', Open University Press, Mc Graw-Hill Education *Richardson, G., & Blades, D. (2001) Social Studies and Science Education: Developing World Citizenship Through Interdisciplinary Partnerships *Solomon, J. (1993) ''Teaching Science, Technology & Society''. Philadelphia, CA: Open University Press. *Solomon, J. & Aikenhead, G. (eds.) (1994) ''STS Education: International Perspectives in Reform''. New York: Teacher's College Press. *Ziman, J. (1994) The rationale of STS education is in the approach. In Solomon, J. & Aikenhead, G. (eds.) (1994). ''STS Education: International Perspectives in Reform''. New York: Teacher's College Press, pp. 21–31.External links
Samples of science curricula
Books
These are examples of books available for information on STS/STSE education, teaching practices in science and issues that may be explored in STS/STSE lessons. *Alsop S., Bencze L., Pedretti E. (eds), (2005). Analysing Exemplary Science Teaching. Theoretical lenses and a spectrum of possibilities for practice, Open University Press, Mc Graw-Hill Education *Bencze, J.L. (editor) (2017). ''Science & technology education promoting wellbeing for individuals, societies & environments''. Dordrecht: Springer. *Gailbraith D. (1997). Analyzing Issues: science, technology, & society. Toronto: Trifolium Books. Inc. *Homer-Dixon, T. (2001). The Ingenuity Gap: Can We Solve the Problems of the Future? (pub.) Vintage Canada. {{DEFAULTSORT:Science, Technology, Society And Environment Education Science education Environmental education Environmental science