STEPWISE is a research and development
project that:
- encourages
and
enables
people
community
activists, teachers, student-teachers,
students and others
to
use their education and their primary and secondary
research to take negotiated sociopolitical
actions
aimed at
improving the 'wellbeing of individuals, societies and environments'
(WISE) - which appear to be threatened by many 'socioscientific' (STSE) issues;
- is
based on the STEPWISE theoretical
framework;
- encourages
and
enables
teachers
to
use
a
general
instructional schematic;
- encourages
and
enables
people
to
conduct
'primary'
science research projects,
along with secondary research (e.g., via Google™), that might motivate and
direct their sociopolitical action(s) [this
is
a
defining
feature
of
STEPWISE];
- for
primary research, encourages and enables people to conduct
correlational studies, as well as experiments, to inform their activism;
- works
to
help
all
learners
to
develop
the best education possible, including
in terms of learning: Concepts
(products of S&T), Skills and STSE
(NoST), which they can use for sociopolitical
action(s);
- provides
suggested topics for
teaching and learning in each learning domain of the STEPWISE framework;
- provides
educators
with
STEPWISE-based
instructional
resources,
many
of
which
are available through the project
wiki (write to us to
become a member), use of which we would like to study (research);
- provides
educators
with
general
educational resources;
- provides
teachers
and
others
(upon
request) with professional development opportunities, including
presentations (e.g., to highlight socioscientific
issues and possible sociopolitical
actions) and workshops (e.g., to familiarize educators with our
instructional resources;
- encourages
and
enables
educators
to
carry
out
action
research, involving data-collection
and analyses relating to different goals (e.g., A, B), to help them and us
understand factors affecting implementation of STEPWISE in contexts of
teaching and learning; and,
- is
associated with the social networking site, PASTE, which also features a
community-reviewed journal, JASTE.
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