Teaching in a Changing Climate: The Importance of Science Teachers’ Beliefs When Confronting Socioscientific Issues (Poster 9)

• In Event: A Global Perspective of the Landscape of Research on Teachers’ Beliefs

Abstract

Purpose
In 2020, New Jersey became the first U.S. state to mandate the teaching of climate change (Cho, 2023), and Connecticut recently passed new standards that require all K-12 public schools to teach about climate change (Wazer, 2023). This move to require climate education is not the norm in the United States, and certainly not the norm around the globe, underscoring just how controversial people view the topic (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 2021). But climate change is only one of many socioscientific issues (SSIs) that face science teachers today, and it sets the scene for how science teachers’ own beliefs intersect with state and national standards and inform their practice. Such challenges place science teachers at the center of complex social problems—confronting climate change, vaccine skepticism, the use of artificial intelligence, and more.
Given this landscape, the purpose of this poster presentation is to review the literature regarding the following topics: (a) explicit and reflective approaches that are used to align science teachers’ beliefs and practices more closely with those of professional scientists’; (b) science teachers’ reasoning through SSIs to generate evidence-based arguments; and (c) factors that influence science teachers’ self-efficacy to implement SSIs into their science instruction.

Theoretical Framework
To understand science teachers’ beliefs and practices surrounding SSIs, we frame our exploration under Bandura’s (1986, 2023) social cognitive theory. We were also guided by the long line of continual inquiry that surrounds teachers’ nature of science beliefs (Chen & Xiao, 2021; Eryasar & Kilinc, 2022; Kilinc et al., 2017; Ozturk & Yilmaz-Tuzun, 2017).

Substantiated Conclusions and Scholarly Significance
Although there is much to be learned about how teacher education and professional development programs might support teachers’ self-efficacy for socioscientific instruction, three general implications can be drawn from existing research. First, teachers can benefit from programs that enhance their content knowledge. These typically involve laboratory or research experiences that enhance teachers’ knowledge and skills relevant to SSIs, such as learning how to evaluate the evidence on the safety and efficacy of vaccines (Brick et al., 2021; Cervato & Kerton, 2017).

Second, teachers benefit from programs that develop their skills for teaching socioscientific issues (Chen & Xiao, 2021). When they are unfamiliar with SSI instruction, their self-efficacy suffers (Sibiç & Topçu, 2020). To feel capable of navigating controversial subjects in the classroom, teachers need explicit instruction in how to do so.

Third, peer collaboration may be another powerful avenue for supporting teachers’ self-efficacy for socioscientific instruction. In covering socioscientific issues with ramifications for public health and the environment, teachers function as activists in the classroom. And whereas activists may doubt their individual ability to produce change, they often feel more efficacious when working in concert with others to achieve their goals (Bandura & Cherry, 2020). Teachers who engage in high quality collaborations with colleagues report higher collective efficacy and teaching self-efficacy (Maass et al., 2022; Voelkel & Chrispeels, 2017).

Authors

• Jason A. Chen, College of William & Mary

• David B. Morris, Saint Mary's College of Maryland