Teachers and Socioscientific Issues – An Overview of Recent Empirical Research

Abstract

The inclusion of socioscientific issues (SSI) in science teaching is often beset by a range of challenges – hereunder lack of time, teachers’ unfamiliarity with SSIs, and lack of assessment methods. This chapter provides an updated overview of recent peer-reviewed publications on pre- and in-service teachers’ relation to SSI. The identified literature indicates that there are (still) issues concerning how best to include SSI aspects into teacher education. We are yet to identify a good practice for inducting prospective teachers into teaching SSI consistently – i.e. not just an auxiliary activity done with one class or cohort. Further, both for including SSI in teacher education and for including SSI in science teaching there are (still) fundamental challenges concerning how to assess students’ learning in SSI-teaching. In particular, some work needs to be done to aide teachers in making operational the learning goals that can be at play in SSI-teaching.