STEPWISE is a research and development
project that:
- encourages
and
enables students to use their education to inform 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 curriculum and
instruction framework;
- encourages
and
enables teachers to use a general
schematic for unit planning;
- encourages
and
enables students to conduct science
inquiry 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];
- works
to
help all students to develop the best education possible, including
in terms of learning: Concepts, 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 teachers 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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