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Perspective taking is a critical yet tangled construct that is used to describe a range of psychological processes and that is applied interchangeably with related constructs. The resulting ambiguity is particularly vexing in science education, where although perspective taking is recognized as critical to informed citizens’ ability to negotiate scientifically related societal issues, or socioscientific issues (SSI) via socioscientific reasoning (SSR), the precise nature of perspective taking remains elusive. To operationalize perspective taking, a theoretical conceptual analysis was employed and used to position perspective taking within the context of SSR. The resulting, more precise construct identified as socioscientific perspective taking (SSPT) requires engagement with others or their circumstances, an etic/emic shift in one’s viewpoint, and a moral context guided by conscience.

Students’ difficulties in interpreting what counts as knowledge have been addressed in past research on science education. The implementation of progressivist pedagogy in terms of more student-active classroom practice and the introduction of a variety of discourses into the science classroom deepens students’ difficulties.The integration of different forms and demands of knowledge and discourses typified by Science-in-Context initiatives, such as within the Socioscientific framework, exemplifies this development in science education. Here, the diffuse boundaries between school subjects and other silos of knowledge leads to considerable difficulties for students to interpret what is expected from them. Such contexts having diffuse boundaries between, for example, subject discourses and other fonts of knowledge, have been describes as contexts with weak classification. The present study aims to explore students’ interpretation of what knowledge or meaning they are requested to produce in contexts with weak classification, here exemplified withinan SSI-task. We use Bernstein’s concepts of recognition rulesand classificationto analyse how 15-16 year-old students develop their discussions in groups of 4-6 students. This study reports how students’ recognitionof the educational demands enabled integration of different discourses in their discussion, and that the use of both universalistic and particularistic meanings can produce new understandings. Students who had not acquired recognition ruleswere found to keep discourses apart, expressed either as rejection of the relevance of the task, answering questions as in a traditional school task, or just exchange of personal opinions. Furthermore, they included discourses irrelevant to the issue.An important outcome of the study was that socioscientific thinking was hampered when students kept universalistic and particularistic meanings apart. This hampering results from the inhibition of dynamic exploration during SSI discussions. The results provide new insights with relevance for teachers’ guiding students towards a fruitful SSI-discourse.

There are certain threats embedded in scientific development that confront society. Gaining practical and instrumental experiences in addressing topics related to the major challenges that confront society today can be possible by tapping the socio-scientific issues as a part of science teaching and learning. This research aimed to explore pre-service teachers’ reflective judgment skills in socio-scientific issues based inquiry science laboratory course. The participants of the research were 20 pre-service teachers at a research oriented public university. Qualitative case study research design was used in this study. The laboratory manuals and semi-structured interviews were used as data collection tools. Data were analyzed by using King and Kitchener’s (1994) reflective judgment framework. Results of the study showed that pre-service teachers’ reflective judgment scores tended to increase from the first experiment to the last experiment. Results suggested that exploring reflective judgment in socio-scientific contexts is beneficial for allowing pre-service teachers to actively engage in knowledge construction.

The aim of this paper is to examine the importance of contextualization of Nature of Science (NOS) within the Socioscientific Issues (SSI) framework, because of the importance to science education. The emphasis on advancing scientific literacy is contingent upon a robust understanding and appreciation of NOS, as well as the acquisition of socioscientific reasoning, skills, and values. Students’ negotiations within SSI are influenced by a variety of factors related to NOS such as scientific knowledge, data interpretations and social interactions including an individuals’ own articulation of personal beliefs. Since NOS and SSI have become fundamental constructs in science education, especially for achieving scientific literacy, it is conceptually important to highlight the rationale(s) behind the contextualization of NOS within the SSI framework. This paper reviews research that entails the integration of SSI with NOS, exploring the nuanced relationships between these two areas. We do this in three sections presenting key aspects of: (a) SSI in science education; (b) NOS in science education; and (c) contextualization of NOS in SSI.

The purpose of this investigation was to examine, from a cross-cultural perspective, students' epistemological patterns of reasoning about socioscientific issues (SSI), and to identify potential interactions of cultural and scientific identity. Mediating factors associated with students' argumentation and discourse about SSI, as well as the public's understanding of science, has been identified as an important area of investigation in the field of science education. This mixed-methods design included over 300 students from Jamaica, South Africa, Sweden, Taiwan, and the United States. Students responded to instruments designed to assess their epistemological conceptualizations and justifications related to distributive justice, allocation of scarce medical resources, and epistemological beliefs over five dimensions related to scientific knowledge. Four iterations of a coding scheme produced over 97% inter-rater agreement for four independent coders. Results indicate there is a consistent trend toward epistemological congruity across cultures within inductively derived themes of: (1) Fairness; (2) Pragmatism; (3) Emotive Reasoning; (4) Utility; and (5) Theological Issues. Moreover, there were no discernable differences in terms of how students from these countries presented their beliefs on the sub-categories of each of the five major categories. It appears that students displayed a high degree of congruence with respect to how they frame their reasoning on this SSI as well as their justifications for their epistemological beliefs. There were statistically significant differences regarding the ability to raise scientifically relevant questions among countries. Commonalities as well as distinguishing characteristics in epistemological orientations are compared and contrasted and connections to a model of socioscientific reasoning with implications for research and pedagogy are discussed. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 50:251–283, 2013

The purpose of this investigation was to explore possible relationships between Socioscientific Issues instruction and students' development of reflective judgment. The usefulness of the Reflective Judgment Model as a tool for assessing the value of SSI is established in the parallels that can be drawn between them. Both involve ill-structured problems requiring evidence-based reasoning subject to differing interpretations by students, and both require examination, analysis and the blending of scientific and normative evidence, as students use that evidence to support a reasoned position. Results demonstrated both qualitative evidence revealing more sophisticated and nuanced epistemological stances toward higher stages of reflective judgment, as well as statistically significant gains within treatment groups with a moderately large effect size. Theoretical implications for advancing students' epistemological beliefs about evidence-based argumentation and pedagogical implications for rethinking how to connect science with topics that are fundamentally meaningful to students are discussed. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 46: 74–101, 2009

An important distinction can be made between the science, technology, and society (STS) movement of past years and the domain of socioscientific issues (SSI). STS education as typically practiced does not seem embedded in a coherent developmental or sociological framework that explicitly considers the psychological and epistemological growth of the child, nor the development of character or virtue. In contrast, the SSI movement focuses on empowering students to consider how science-based issues reflect, in part, moral principles and elements of virtue that encompass their own lives, as well as the physical and social world around them. The focus of this paper is to describe a research-based framework of current research and practice that identifies factors associated with reasoning about socioscientific issues and provide a working model that illustrates theoretical and conceptual links among key psychological, sociological, and developmental factors central to SSI and science education. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed, 89:357–377, 2005

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between stu- dents' conceptions of the nature of science and their reactions to evidence that challenged their beliefs about socioscientific issues. This study involved 41 pairs of students repre- senting "critical cases" of contrasting ethical viewpoints. These 82 students were identified from a larger sample of 248 students from 9th and 10th grade general science classes, 11th and 12th grade honors biology, honors science, and physics classes, and upper-level college preservice science education classes. Students responded to questions aimed at re- vealing their epistemological views of the nature of science and their belief convictions on a selected socioscientific issue. The smaller subset of students was selected based on varying degrees of belief convictions about the socioscientific issues and the selected stu- dents were then paired to discuss their reasoning related to the issue while being exposed to anomalous data and information from each other and in response to epistemological probes of an interviewer. Taxonomic categories of students' conceptions of the nature of science were derived from the researchers' analysis of student responses to interviews and ques- tionnaires. In some instances, students' conceptions of the nature of science were reflected in their reasoning on a moral and ethical issue. This study stimulated students to reflect on their own beliefs and defend their opinions. The findings suggest that the reactions of students to anomalous socioscientific data are varied and complex, with notable differences in the reasoning processes of high school students compared to college students. A deeper understanding of how students reason about the moral and ethical context of controversial socioscientific issues will allow science educators to incorporate teaching strategies aimed at developing students' reasoning skills in these crucial areas. C

This study aimed to explore preservice teachers’ (PTs) argumentation quality during socioscientific issues (SSI) based classroom discussions. The participants of the study were 20 PTs from the Department of Elementary Education at a large, research oriented public university in Turkey. Qualitative case study method was used in this study. The study covered four socioscientific issues (food additives, alternative energy sources, climate change, and the industrial revolution). Each issue was discussed in the classroom and each discussion was video recorded. Video recordings were transcribed verbatim and used as data source. Classroom discussions verbatim transcribes were analyzed by using a modified version of Toulmin’s argumentation pattern (TAP) model. The modified approach was found to be more conducive to informal argumentation patterns, in order to analyze preservice teachers’ use of claims, grounds, warrants, backings, and rebuttals that support their debate positions, as well as their ability to use evidence-based reasoning, form coherent lines of reasoning, and use of correct (appropriate) evidence. Results of the study revealed that preservice teachers’ use of evidence to support conflicting ideas tended to increase as their use of incorrect or insufficient use of evidence decreased through the present study.