STEPWISE
is a theoretical and practical
framework for organizing teaching
& learning in science (&
technology) education with these main
features:
- It encourages
and
enables 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;
- Although there is
controversy about definitions, we
can think of STSE issues as
disagreements about the causes and
benefits of particular
relationships among fields of
science and technology and
societies & environments; such
as differences of opinion about
the degree to which governments
should regulate the content of
manufactured foods. Of particular
importance are decisions made by powerful
people and organizations
(e.g., companies) that may be
harmful to many people, other
living things and environments;
- It is
based on the STEPWISE
theoretical
framework - which organizes
learning domains in a way that
student learning can be used, in
part, to take actions to try to
make a better world. In this
framework, all learning is
co-dependent on all other learning
and on students' research and
actions;
- We have found that,
despite the merits of the
tetrahedral (theoretical) version,
teachers prefer a linear
version of STEPWISE for
instructional purposes;
- It encourages
and
enables
people
to
conduct
'primary' science
research projects,
along with secondary research
(e.g., via Google™).
Through self-directed research,
learners may develop an identity
with and attachment to their
topics/issues/results and,
consequently, may be more
motivated to act on them;
- For
primary research, it encourages
and enables people to conduct
correlational
studies, as well as experiments,
to inform their activism - since
experiments may lead to harmful
outcomes; and,
- It works
to
help
all
learners
to
develop learning in several
domains, including
in terms of: Concepts
(products of S&T), Skills
and STSE
(NoST),
which they can use for
sociopolitical
action(s).
To help educators become
familiar with and effectively use
STEPWISE, we:
- provide suggested
topics for
teaching and learning in each
learning domain of the STEPWISE
framework;
- provide
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);
- provide
educators
with general
educational
resources;
- provide
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);
- encourage
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,
- our work is associated
with the social networking site, PASTE,
which also features a
community-reviewed journal, JASTE.
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