• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.472-486
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• 2010

The surveys for public awareness in relation to socio-scientific issues (SSI) have been limited to several topics such as public perception of risks about the issues and preference for some policies. To illuminate the public science culture literacy about SSI from a holistic perspective, this study aimed to develop an indicator system. For this purpose, the issue on climate change, which is currently one of the biggest issues worldwide, was adopted as a specific SSI and the framework centering on climate change was developed. Science culture literacy about SSI was defined as a lifestyle to identify SSI from various viewpoints and to cope with problems related to SSI appropriately. In the framework proposed, individual science culture indicators are divided into Potential and Activity area. The Potential consists of categories of Interest, Opinion and Understanding, whereas the Activity is composed of categories of Learning and Practice. To examine the reliability and validity of this framework statistically, the developed questionnaire was reviewed by science educators, environment experts and atmospheric scientists and was used to asked 777 secondary students. Based on the results of statistical analyses, the framework was modified and it consequently had 2 areas, 5 categories, 15 sub-categories, 34 indicators and 63 items. It is expected that the framework of science culture indicators for SSI could be used as a measurement tool for public awareness about various SSI topics.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.66-75
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• 2015

This study is to investigate an argumentation level for elementary school students after analysing an argumentation structure about a socio scientific issue(SSI), and inquire a change of the decision-making according to the refutation materials and empathic situation. This data was collected from the semi-structured interview with the 14 students, grade 6th. For this, the first stage is to present the reading materials about the SSI to the students, let them decision-making and make them argue pro and con about the SSI during the interview. After that, facing with the refutation materials against the existing contention and the empathic situation, the change of the decision-making of the students was conducted. After the research, the level of the argumentation of the students was low, and the students who didn't have the background knowledge about the theme made the decisions according to the values, emotions or intuitions of their own. And the decision-making of the students changed more when presented with the refutation materials and the empathic situation, they were difficult to make the decision because of new information and various stances. Besides, they lacked in the ability that recognize the situation related with their own life, just used the fragmentary knowledge associated with value of life respect. Through these result, it is necessary to produce the refutation materials and empathic materials about the SSI to the students for improving the level of argumentation.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.416-425
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• 2016

As curriculum statements require addressing ethical and social issues which are raised by modern science and technology, the ability to perceive ethical and social issues regarding science is necessary for teachers to introduce socio-scientific issues (SSI) in their science class. The purpose of this study is to explore elementary school teachers' ethical sensitivity on SSI and attempts to give implications for teacher education. To explore the ethical sensitivity in the context of SSI, the revised version of the Test for Ethical Sensitivity on Science (TESS) was used. Two socio-scientific issues (genetic engineering and radioactive waste) were provided to read and write down five possible questions they believed should be considered before reaching a decision. Data was collected from eighty-two elementary school teachers in Korea. To analyze the ethical sensitivity, the responses including ethical considerations were analyzed by situation and ethical issues. The result showed that 81 out of 82 teacher participants provided at least more than one ethical consideration on each scenario of this study. However, not many teacher could raise various ethical issues and situation that ethical issue might occur. There were only a few teaches who could consider all the situations, 'process of scientific research', 'application of science and technology', and 'science influenced by society', that ethical issues might occur. Especially, teachers failed to consider that the ethical issue can occur in the situation when science is influenced by society. Based on the results, we suggest that during teacher education teachers need to experience finding various ethical issues that can occur in the context of SSI and especially considering the ethical issues when science is influenced by society.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.174-184
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to investigate the awareness of elementary school teachers on the socio-scientific issues. Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Accident was used by concrete issue connected with SSI for this study. Participants in this study were twelve elementary school teachers studying at K University Graduate School of Education, located in the central region, who underwent a semi-structured interview. The study method was the phenomenological research method which is one of the qualitative research methods, and the interview papers had been examined by three scientific experts. As a result of the study, it was divided into twenty six themes, eight theme clusters, and two categories, and considered the thoughts on the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident, its influence on Korea, the relationship between science and society as a result of the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident, interested in social issues related to science, application in class, response from students and the influence on students. Teachers had a general understanding of science-related social issues, but did not have much interest in the subject. However, they mentioned that to apply the issues in the curriculum would have a positive influence and encourage scientific motivation in students and, furthermore, helped them to develop the awareness of science in their surroundings. A greater interest in socio-scientific issues need to require from teachers and, through including these issues in the curriculum, we should have positive influence in developing science education.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.11-23
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• 2014

The purpose of this study is to analyze the degree of argumentation structure development and factors of development of preservice teachers through SSI related argumentative writings. The study was conducted with 16 preservice teachers that students taking elementary science education theory class in K university located in Chungbuk. The testees wrote six SSI related argumentative writings (once a week), and we examined the degree of argumentation structure development and the change in the recognition of SSI of the preservice teachers by comparing the writings before and after the experiments. The experimental results showed that argumentation structure of the preservice teachers'writings improved and argument level (argument capability) of them also increased as the number of writing was increased. Factors that affect the argumentation structure improvement are mainly argumentation structure education, a number of writings, feedbacks, and subjects related to SSI. In this aspect, the argumentative writing on SSI has the effect of developing scientific sophistication and enhancing the decision-making power of students, and it has positive impacts in science education.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.294-309
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• 2013

This study addressed the awareness of social issues related to science of future elementary school teachers. Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Accident was used by concrete issue connected with SSI for this study. Twelve second-year students attending a university of education participated in the study, who were taking a class of science teacher preparation at that time that consists of the content of the elementary science education courses. The study revealed that all the pre-service elementary teachers recognized Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Accident and received such information through various medias. In particular, they were receiving more information about the Nuclear Power Plant Accident through the internet than any other media by using the internet a lot, and also gained additional information through the internet. However, despite the fact that they recognized Nuclear Power Plant Accident, they neither had much information about it nor had been interested in SSI such as the Nuclear Power Plant Accident. Moreover, they had been basically uneducated about SSI. Despite of having no interest in SSI such as Nuclear Power Plant Accident, the study revealed that the pre-service elementary teachers recognized that scientific problems such as Nuclear Power Plant Accident may affect a society closely. In addition, they together sympathized with the point that SSI education should be applied on the current education courses by identifying the problem in application. As the study revealed above, the application of SSI education to the formal education courses as well as more lively research on that subject is very important and urgent for boosting interest in science subjects and enlightening the nature of science that is one of the objectives of science education.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.47 no.2
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• pp.180-191
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• 2023

The purpose of this study was to investigate the preferred SSI topics of students and teachers in elementary, middle, and high schools. It analyzed the similarity of students' and teachers' preferred SSI topics by school level using the cosine similarity measure. A total of 566 students and 327 teachers from elementary, middle, and high schools participated in the study. Sixty topics were identified and listed in the areas of environment, science and technology, health and medicine, and other social issues based on the literature and SSI programs. Students and teachers were asked to select five of their favorite topics. The data was collected online using SurveyMonkey. The collected data was divided into six groups of students and teachers, and the frequency of topic selection was analyzed within each group. The topic preference similarity was analyzed by calculating vector values based on the frequency of the selected topics and measuring the cosine similarity between students, teachers, and teachers and students by school level. The results are as follows: First, the cosine similarity of SSI Preferred Topics between students' school-level cohorts was higher between middle and high school students (0.982) than between elementary and middle school students (0.651) or between elementary and high school students (0.662). Second, the cosine similarity of SSI Preferred Topics between teachers' school-level cohorts was similar for all comparison groups between elementary, middle, and high school. Third, the SSI topic preference similarity between students and teachers by school level had a higher cosine similarity between the elementary student and teacher cohorts (0.974) than the other school level comparisons, middle school (0.621) or high school (0.645). Access to topics of interest to students in SSI education is strongly associated with motivation and persistence in learning, as well as an enjoyable learning experience and positive attitudes toward learning. Therefore, when designing SSI lessons, it is important to examine topics from the perspective of student interest, especially if the teacher has selected SSI topics that are different from students' preferences. Careful instructional design will be needed to overcome the gap.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.284-296
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• 2020

This study investigates the effect of SSI debate on first-year high school student's opinions about environmental issue, their judgment grounds, and solutions to regional environmental problems. The SSI debate was about white heron habitats near the village where students live. As the main data of the study, environmental perception questionnaires, and students' workbook including open-ended questions were collected before and after class. The environmental perception questionnaire was analyzed by descriptive statistics, and the response of the open-ended questions was analyzed through inductive qualitative research methods. First, the results of this study shows that the SSI debate has a statistically significant impact on students' environmental attitude. Second, a majority of students agreed on the idea that villagers should drive the birds out of town and they did not change their after the discussion class. However, after the discussion class, students' solutions about the issue were changed in a way that more short-term, feasible, concrete, and less time-consuming solutions to the problem. Based on the results of this study, this study implies that SSI issue debate using local problem should be used more often in science classroom so the students recognize local SSI and improve real world problem solving skills.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.446-459
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• 2024

This study aims to examine the development and learning process of the argumentative abilities in elementary school students with regards to learning science. Toward this end, the SSI argumentation education program was implemented in conjunction with the science curriculum for sixth-grade students across 10 months. In this process, the scoring criteria in terms of formal and content aspects were developed and used to assess their argumentative text analysis and expression abilities. The results were as follows: First, the type of SSI influenced their ability to analyze argumentative texts. However, their formal and content aspects improved as learning progressed. Second, with regards to the formal aspect associated with the ability to express argumentative texts, reasons were initially most frequently cited. Over time, incorporating evidence to support these reasons and the use of rebuttal also increased. Third, in terms of content aspect, the level of use of all elements increased as learning progressed; however, level of acknowledgments and rebuttal elements exhibited a relatively slower progress. In summary, ability of the students to analyze and express argumentative texts improved as they increasingly gained experience in learning about argumentation. The study deduced that elementary school students can develop their argumentative abilities through appropriate learning support, such as teacher feedback, along with implementation of the SSI argumentation education program over an extended period. Based on these results, the study proposes the development of SSI materials and incorporation of SSI argumentative writing in the science curriculum.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.581-596
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• 2013

The aim of this study was to identify students' views on the orientation of science and to investigate the relationship between their views and decision-making on socio-scientific issues (SSI). In this study, 27 university students attending a science course were asked to discuss four controversial issues: the Toyota recall, the green car, the global warming and swine influenza (influenza A (H1N1)). The study was comprised of two stages. At the first stage, we examined students' views on the nature of science and on the orientation of science with the open-ended questionnaire based on VNOS and VOSTS. While they held relatively similar views on the nature of science, their views on the orientation of science were distinct as pragmatic, intrinsic, communal and ethical views. At the second stage, to examine the role of their views on the orientation of science in decision-making, we selected four students who had similar views on NOS but different views on the orientation of science. The four students were selected from each group of views on the orientation of science and their decision-making processes were analyzed following grounded theory. Across SSIs, they relied upon their views on the orientation of science as the strategies for decision, though considered different perception, and causal and contextual conditions. This study indicates that understanding students' views on the orientation of science would be helpful for achieving scientific literacy for informed decision.