Teacher Learning for Socioscientific Thinking: A Critical and Complex Review of Literature

• In Event: Saturday Roundtable 7:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Sociopolitical Issues in STEM Teacher Education (Table 14)

Abstract

Socioscientific Issues (SSI) education calls for a complex set of cognitive competencies that disrupt dominant western logic. Preparing teachers to support students to learn these socioscientific cognitive practices also requires understanding how to help teachers grapple with these disruptive, political shifts in worldview. However, the body of research on teacher learning for SSI instruction is slim, and studies on teacher learning for socioscientific thinking are even more rare. Accordingly, we offer a critical, complex review of extant research investigating teacher learning and development for the cognitive practices needed to engage in and teach SSI, with attention to the onto-epistemological shifts underlying them.

Authors

• Kathryn J. Strom, California State University - East Bay

• Syahrul Amin, Texas A&M University

• Angela Fitzgerald, RMIT University

• Katherine Blanchard, Smithsonian Science Education Center

• Jacqueline Kolb, Smithsonian Science Education Center

• Ashley Rae Koch, Five Keys Schools and Programs