• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.30 no.7
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• pp.887-900
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• 2010

This study aimed to identify some tendencies when college students got to making a decision on socioscientific issues. The guiding research questions were as follows. First, what are college students' tendencies in terms of their moral reactions and attitudes toward SSI when they get to making a decision? And second, how do their own circumstances, personalities, and values play a role in shaping their stance on SSI? Data was collected by individual interviews with thirty college students. The results indicated that most participants immediately brought in their own values, worldviews, and feelings in implicit or explicit ways when talking about SSI. Their reactions were influenced by their backgrounds such as religion, and family background, personality, past experiences, personal interests, and prior knowledge. In addition, the responses of the participants presented some tendencies in their decision-making process. The tendencies can be categorized into 1) bringing in personal values without further engagement, 2) being confused with incompatible values, 3) being overwhelmed by too many aspects to consider, and 4) trying to be detached from the issues.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.353-365
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• 2010

This study explored the accumulated personal practical knowledge of six experienced science teachers in teaching SSI. The guiding research questions were: 1) how did they develop their understanding of SSI and their goals for teaching SSI over many years, and 2) what are the practical issues that the teachers have experienced while addressing SSI in science classrooms. The data source included individual interviews with six science teachers. Each interview lasted 50-70 minutes long and was audio-taped. Data was analyzed based on the methods suggested by Miles and Huberman (1994). Results indicated that, although their motivations for teaching SSI were personal and different, two major categories emerged. One group of teachers was mainly motivated by SSI itself, and the other group was motivated by the teaching aspects that SSI brings. The SSI-oriented group was very sensitive to SSI as it occurs in contemporary society. The teaching-oriented group paid more attention to the educational benefits that addressing SSI could bring to students. Their motivations for teaching SSI influenced how they set up their purposes for teaching, and their purposes for teaching guided them to use appropriate teaching strategies to make their SSI teaching more effective. All of their practical concerns were also connected to their basic motivations for teaching SSI.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.395-405
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• 2017

This study aims to investigate the effects of socioscientific issues (SSI) instruction on promoting college students' character and values as citizens, and to compare the effects based on the psychological factor - idiocentrism and allocentrism. Thirty-one college students who enrolled in the SSI course participated in this study. The SSI course provided the students with opportunities to explore various aspects of five topics, to express and share their own opinions, and to identify reasonable alternatives. The students with distinct tendencies were classified into two groups (i.e. idiocentric and allocentric groups) based on the personal value orientation scores before the instruction, and they responded to the questionnaire to examine their character and values as citizens before and after the instruction. The results showed that the students' social and moral compassion and socioscientific accountability improved significantly after the SSI course. The overall effects of the SSI program on students' character and values were not significantly different between two groups. However, the post-mean score of the allocentric group in socioscientific accountability was higher than the one of the idiocentric group. This study shows that SSI instruction could positively affect character development regardless of psychological tendencies, and could be implemented in the science classroom as a good instructional approach to integrating science education and character education.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.32 no.7
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• pp.1124-1138
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• 2012

This study investigates Korean middle school students' perceptions as global citizens (i.e. ecological worldview, social and moral compassion, and socioscientific accountability) of Socioscientific Issues (SSI). We developed questionnaires that consisted of 20 Likert-type items to gauge their preceptions of the three different SSI contexts (i.e. nuclear power generation, bio-technology, climate change), and administered them to 225 9th grade students in Seoul. The results revealed that participants showed relatively high scores for ecological worldview but scored low on social and moral compassion across the SSI contexts. In addition, participants presented much higher scores for ecological worldview and socioscientific accountability regarding the issues of climate change. The participant responses indicated that they perceived more inter-connectedness with the environment and felt the responsibility of promoting sustainable development more to prevent further devastation in the context of climate change compared to nuclear power generation or biotechnology.

• 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.41 no.1
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• pp.59-70
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• 2021

Ability to make informed decisions by critically evaluating media information on socioscientific issues (SSI) is one of the crucial elements of scientific literacy that citizens should obtain. This study aims to investigate how middle school students evaluated media information about socioscientific issues (SSI) when they faced two different types of information (i.e., numerical and empathic information). To achieve the aim, 96 middle school students responded to the questionnaires asking them to evaluate reliability and persuasiveness of SSI media information. The questionnaires consisted of two sets of newspaper articles on each SSI (pro-numerical/empathic, against-numerical/empathic). After reading the articles, the students evaluated reliability and persuasiveness of each article and wrote the reasons for their evaluation. The results were as follows: First, the students believed that news articles with numerical information were more reliable than the ones with empathic information in all SSI contexts. They tended to trust scientific evidence and data from numerical information, and real cases, societal problems, expressions, and values from empathic information. In addition, they evaluated their reliability based on the logic of information, accuracy of information, breadth and depth of data, and quantity and quality of sources both numerical and empathic information. Second, in case of evaluating persuasiveness of the articles, they focused more on the values that information contained, richness and logicality of the information, rather than the types of information, regardless of the type of information.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.523-534
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• 2014

This study aimed to develop collective intelligence (CI) based instructional models for teaching socioscientific issues on the basis of intimate collaboration with science teachers, and to investigate the participating teachers' perceptions on the effectiveness of the instructional models. Adapting the ADDIE model, we suggested three types of SSI instructional models (i.e. generative model, exploratory model, and decision-making model). Generative models emphasized the process of brainstorming ideas or possible solutions for SSI. Exploratory models focused on providing students opportunities to explore various SSI cases and diverse perspectives to understand its controversial nature and complexity. Decision-making models encouraged students to negotiate or develop a group-consensus on SSI through the dialogical process. After implementing the instructional models in the science classroom, the teachers reported that CI-based SSI instructional models contributed to encouraging students' active participation and collaboration as well as to improving the quality of their argument or discourses on SSI. They also supported the importance of developing collective consciousness on the issues in the beginning of the SSI class, providing independent time and space for reflecting on their personal values and opinions with scientific evidence, and formulating an atmosphere where they freely exchanged opinions and feedback for constructing better collective ideas.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.253-268
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• 2008

This paper has two major purposes. One is to introduce the essentialist methodology as a way to articulate subjective aspects of human beings (e.g. teachers' personal values and concerns, philosophies, subjective experiences, etc.) at a deeper level. And the other is to present two portraits, as examples, of science teachers who actively address socioscientiifc issues (SSI) out of their own motivations. The primary data source was consecutive in-depth interviews with two science teachers, Jenna and Thomas, and the interviews were conducted on the basis of the principle of the "participant as ally" (Witz, 2006). The articulation based on the essentialist methodology shows that teachers' deep-rooted values and convictions often play a significant role as a personal social capital enough to expand their teaching practice (i.e. teaching SSI). Namely, this study confirms that teachers who are motivated out of their own convictions are likely to actively develop their own personal practical knowledge, and to implement particular topics or teaching strategies.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.323-334
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• 2017

Current science education aims to guide students as future responsible citizens to make informed decisions on socioscientific issues (SSI). In the authors' previous study, it was found that conceptions of nature of technology (NOT) were explicitly represented in various contexts of SSI with differentiated levels of understanding, and cases of the informed NOT understanding included the key features of well-reasoned SSI decision-making. Therefore, enhancing NOT understanding could be one of the elements to leverage students' informed SSI decision-making. In this study, we developed a rubric to assess NOT understanding in the context of SSI and applied it to evaluate the impact of SSI instruction. Participants were 58 college students who took an SSI course for 6 weeks. Before and after the SSI course, they were asked to write decision-making essays on the Golden Rice issue (a type of genetically modified food). As a result of analyzing the pre- and post decision-making essay using the rubric, it was found that NOT understanding was improved after the SSI course; in addition, the salient patterns of NOT changes were analyzed in detail in order to gauge the influence of the SSI classes. Implications for science education were discussed.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.303-315
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• 2016

Socioscientific issues (SSI), by their nature, are conceptually embedded in technology. Previous research reported that nature of technology (NOT), unlike nature of science, was quite explicitly manifested in SSI decision-making, and NOT could be a promising construct for promoting SSI reasoning. In this study, authors introduced an integrated conceptual framework for NOT, which consisted of four dimensions (i.e., artifacts, knowledge, practice and system) as diverse modes of technology. We adapted the framework to investigate students' conceptualizations of NOT in the context of various SSIs. Data was collected from 45 college students enrolled in a liberal arts course on science and technology. The students participated in a team project, where they prepared and led discussions for SSI topics in class. Seven topics concerning SSIs were selected by students themselves. The preparation and class discussion of each student group were audio-recorded, and final reports were also analyzed. As a result, NOT sub-components in the dimensions of artifacts and system were explicitly represented in most contexts of SSI with various ranges of understanding. Other sub-components under the dimensions of knowledge and practice were rarely or implicitly shown in the discussion. The depth of students' understanding on NOT varied. Implications for science education were discussed.