Supervisor: hannie gijlers
In primary and secondary schools, students learn about science, and while it is, of course, important to understand scientific phenomena, it can also be argued that science education should focus on today's as well as future societal issues. From that perspective, it becomes important to teach students about complex socio-scientific issues related to, for example, the environment. Although this might sound abstract, students already engage with questions like "Should our school ban single-use plastics?" or "Why do some people choose electric cars?" By investigating these types of problems, they learn to consider multiple perspectives and understand that real-world problems rarely have simple answers.
This internship project focuses on the development of an interactive learning module on a socio-scientific issue for primary or early secondary education. SSI education at this level can be implemented through age-appropriate scenarios and familiar contexts. Instead of overwhelming students with global issues, the learning environment should focus on tangible examples that directly relate to students' experiences, such as sustainable fashion, what pair of jeans to buy, what type of car should a family buy, or what is a fair phone. These types of topics still incorporate multiple stakeholder perspectives and evidence-based reasoning but are concrete and relevant. The module will be designed for the Go-Lab platform, and we will implement concept mapping tools to capture and analyze how students' understanding evolves throughout the learning process.
Tasks involve initial reading about SSI in primary/secondary education, selecting a topic for the SSI scenario, creating a narrative for the scenario, developing stakeholder profiles and perspectives, selecting or developing resources, and implementation in the Go-Lab system.