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Pupil decision‐making about socio‐scientific issues within the science curriculum
Abstract
This study explores the skills, knowledge and values used by 15‐year‐old pupils, in a UK school, in making decisions about science‐related societal issues. The complexities of the decision‐making process, group social interactions, and the interrelationship between affective and cognitive criteria in reasoning, are acknowledged. Boys, undertaking a GCSE science course in which decision‐making tasks were an integral feature, were audio‐taped during discussion, interviewed, and had their written work analysed. Key features of well reasoned pupil decision‐making included: understanding procedures for rational analysis of the problem; awareness and use of available information; clarification of the concerns and values raised by the issue; recognition of how scientific evidence may assist in the decision; motivation to engage fully in discussing the issue; consideration of and respect for differing viewpoints about the issue.
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Citations
Cited by
Enhancing the quality of argumentation in school science
Osborne, J., Erduran, S., & Simon, S. (2004) · Journal of Research in Science Teaching · doi:10.1002/tea.20035 · Cited by 1,596
Kolstø, S. D. (2001) · Science Education · doi:10.1002/sce.1011 · Cited by 805
Reconceptualizing the teaching of controversial issues
Oulton, C., Dillon, J., & Grace, M. M. (2004) · International Journal of Science Education · doi:10.1080/0950069032000072746 · Cited by 369
Identifying Science Understanding for Functional Scientific Literacy
Ryder, J. (2001) · Studies in Science Education · doi:10.1080/03057260108560166 · Cited by 329
Herman, B. C., Poor, S., Clough, M. P., Rao, A., Kidd, A., De Jesús, D., & Varghese, D. (2024) · Journal of Research in Science Teaching · doi:10.1002/tea.21934 · Cited by 22
Metadata
- Authors
- Ratcliffe, M.
- Venue
- International Journal of Science Education
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 1997-02
- Volume
- 19
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 167-182
- ISSN
- 0950-0693 (ISSN-L)
- 1464-5289
- OpenAlex
- W2019765656
- Cited by
- 264
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 19.46
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- Ratcliffe, M. (1997). Pupil decision‐making about socio‐scientific issues within the science curriculum. International Journal of Science Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/0950069970190203
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
