• Journal of Science Education
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.11-23
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• 2023

In this study, we examined the effect of socioscientific issue (SSI) based science lessons on underachieving 9th-grade students. A total of seven lessons centered on two SSIs related to the national science curriculum were developed and implemented during the first semester of 2021. Data were collected from 185 9th-grade students in one middle school in a mid-sized city of South Korea. Among them, 37 were identified as achieving far below the standards (underachieving students hereafter). Quantitative data were collected from pre- and post-tests on basic science content and attitudes and competency measures. To supplement quantitative data, lesson observation notes were recorded, and student interviews with a selected number of students were conducted. The analysis of quantitative data was conducted through the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test and paired t-tests. Qualitative data were analyzed to find reasons for changing attitudes. The findings showed that the SSI-based lessons were more effective on underachieving students than the others in enhancing basic academic achievement, while there was no significant effect on all in attitudes and competency. Lesson observation data showed that underachieving students were more engaged in SSI-based lessons than before. Student interviews demonstrated several reasons why they were engaged, suggesting the aspects of SSI-based lessons that facilitated underachieving students' learning. Further research topics are suggested.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.453-464
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• 2017

The purposes of the study are to investigate the experiences of major stakeholders (i.e. science teachers, program instructors, local experts, etc.) who participated in implementing Community-Based Socioscientific Issues Programs (SSI-COMM) and to provide educational implications for further implementation. SSI-COMM dealt with three issues (i.e. abandoned pets, fine dust, and recycling) that students often encountered in their local community. Each program, lasting over 16 class periods in a free semester, included in-school and out-of-school activities in order to promote their interest and participation in community. Four teachers, four program instructors, and six local experts joined the interviews to explain their experience of participating in the programs. As a result, school teachers, program instructors, and local experts positively appreciated their experiences of the program implementation and perceived educational potentials of SSI-COMM. All the stakeholders mentioned that they became more interested in local socioscientific issues and strongly perceived the need for the implementation of such programs linked to their own community. The science teachers appreciated the opportunities to identify students' potentials through SSI-COMM and believed that SSI-COMM would contribute to reducing the gap between learning and practice. The program instructors, observed that out-of-school activities contributed to enhancing students' self-confidence and fulfillment in learning. Finally, the local experts obtained a sense of belonging to their community and were very satisfied with their contribution. The SSI-COMM programs are expected to be one of the educational models that will help to encourage the participation of students and stakeholders in facilitating educational activities in relation to the community.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.181-192
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• 2017

This study aims to examine the educational effects of the SSI program using Digital Storytelling (DST) approaches. Since DST provides students opportunities to express their own opinions in the form of stories and to share learning outcomes through the web, we developed and implemented SSI program by adopting the concept of DST in order to produce synergistic effects on student learning. Twenty-four 9th graders who enthusiastically engaged in the DST-based SSI program participated in this study. The students responded to focus group interviews after the instruction, and all interviews were transcribed for analysis. The results indicated that the students became aware of socio-ethical perspectives of each SSI topic while searching and collecting data by themselves. They also felt the necessity to consider multiple perspectives around the issues by having discussions with group members. Second, pre-producing DST allowed students to negotiate to settle on a group discussion, and to use emotional contents that can lead viewers to have sympathy. In addition, while producing DST, students considered various factors such as design, soundtrack, visual effects, and screen composition in order to express their opinions and convey their messages more effectively. In the stage of sharing DST outcomes and receiving feedback, they realized new perspectives that they did not perceive in the previous production process, and to move them into an action for resolving the problems caused by SSI. This study showed the potentials of DST-based SSI instruction as a good strategy to support students' SSI engagement.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.467-480
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• 2018

This study aims to investigate how flipped learning-based socioscientific issue instruction (FL-SSI instruction) affected middle school students' key competencies and character development. Traditional classrooms are constrained in terms of time and resources for exploring the issues and making decision on SSI. To address these concerns, we designed and implemented an SSI instruction adopting flipped learning. Seventy-three 8th graders participated in an SSI program on four topics for over 12 class periods. Two questionnaires were used as a main data source to measure students' key competencies and character development before and after the SSI instruction. In addition, student responses and shared experience from focus group interviews after the instruction were collected and analyzed. The results indicate that the students significantly improved their key competencies and experienced character development after the SSI instruction. The students presented statistically significant improvement in the key competencies (i.e., collaboration, information and technology, critical thinking and problem-solving, and communication skills) and in two out of three factors in character and values as global citizens (social and moral compassion, and socio-scientific accountability). Interview data supports the quantitative results indicating that SSI instruction with a flipped learning strategy provided students in-depth and rich learning opportunities. The students responded that watching web-based videos prior to class enabled them to deeply understand the issue and actively engage in discussion and debate once class began. Furthermore, the resulting gains in available class time deriving from a flipped learning approach allowed the students to examine the issue from diverse perspectives.

• 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 Association For Science Education
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.431-442
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• 2015

SSI instruction can be an effective tool to promote key competencies for future citizens. Our assumption of the study is that applying the concept of collective intelligence in the context of SSI learning would facilitate the learning. Thus, we designed and implemented Collective Intelligence-based SSI instruction over almost a year and observed the effects of the instruction on enhancing students' collaboration, information management, critical thinking, and communication skills. Twenty 9th grade students enrolled in a science-gifted program voluntarily participated. Data was collected by administering a questionnaire to examine the skills before, in the middle of, and after the instruction, and by conducting classroom observations and focus student group interviews. The results indicated some degree of improvement in their targeted skills. First, they experienced the expansion of their thoughts by actively sharing information and ideas using the web platform. Second, they became more flexible and open to different points of views in order to accomplish a common goal. Third, they appreciated having independent time and space to explore their own positions on the issues and to search necessary information, and believed that the process encouraged them to more pro-actively participate and communicate in the group debates. Lastly, they positively perceived the values that collaboration with diverse group members could produce.

• 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 Association For Science Education
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.259-271
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• 2018

This study examined the effect of the SSI argumentation program based on social and emotional learning(SEL). The program consisted of 3 stages: (1) express their own feelings about SSI, identify the issues of SSI, and define a goal; (2) think of many possible solutions and envision results through argumentation; (3) select the best solution and make a decision based on warrants, data, and rebuttals. In each stage, the social-emotional strategies of self-awareness, self-management, social-awareness, relationship-management, and responsible decision making were used. Seventeen preservice biology teachers participated in this study during one semester dealing with four socioscientific issues. The results indicated that the preservice teachers, as time went on, became accustomed to expressing identifiable rebuttals, dispute talk, and asking questions. At the first SSI argumentation, argumentation mainly consisted of cumulative talk with no rebuttals, representing level 2 argumentation. Level 3 argumentation represented rebuttals that were implicit and weak, with cumulative talk. In level 2 and 3 argumentation, the preservice teachers represented understanding of others and compassion for self and others. Level 4 argumentation had rebuttals that were explicit, asking critical questions of the opposite sides. In addition, level 5 argumentation represented more than two controversial points with several instances of dispute talk. In levels 4 and 5, the preservice teachers became actively engaged in communication, inquiry self with others, managing vulnerability and negotiation.

• Journal of Engineering Education Research
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.3-16
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• 2020

This study aims to introduce the ENACT model, which is a systematic teaching-learning model for cultivating social responsibility of science and engineering college students, and to discuss its educational implications. For the development of the ENACT model, we conducted extensive literature reviews on RRI, STEM education, and science and technology studies (STS). In addition, we examined exemplary overseas education programs emphasizing social responsibility of scientists/engineers and citizens. The ENACT model consists of five steps; 1) Engage in SSIs, 2) Navigate SSIs, 3) Anticipate consequences, 4) Conduct scientific and engineering practice, and 5) Take action. This model links Socioscientific Issues (SSI) education with engineering education, dividing the major elements of social responsibility education for scientists and engineers into the dimensions of epistemology and praxis, and reflected them in the model. This effort enables science and engineering college students to pursue more responsible and sustainable development by carrying out the responsible problem-solving process based on an understanding of the nature of science and technology. We plan to implement ENACT model based programs for science and engineering college students and to examine the effects.

• Journal of Engineering Education Research
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.3-19
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• 2021

This study aimed to introduce a case study of a basic engineering design course using the ENACT model for fostering social responsibility of engineers, and to investigate the educational effects of the course. Since the ENACT model was designed to encourage STEM college students to pursue responsible problem solving based on their understanding of socioscientific issues, we assumed that it would be beneficial for engineering students to foster their social responsibility as well as their understanding of science/engineering-related issues. A total of 49 engineering students who enrolled in the course participated in the study. Data included students' course artifacts, reflection papers, and responses to survey questionnaires. Results indicated that the students became more aware of nature of science and technology after the program, and began to solve the problems while considering the views of multiple stakeholders. They highly valued the experience of communicating with others as engaging in the civic activities. They also expressed high satisfaction and feeling of achievement on the course learning. We expect the ENACT model to be an effective teaching guideline that fosters the social responsibility of engineering students and furthermore, engineering ethics.