Does stes-oriented science education promote 10th-grade students' decision-making capability?

Abstract

Today's society is continuously coping with sustainability-related complex issues in the Science- Technology-Environment-Society (STES) interfaces. In those contexts, the need and relevance of the development of students' higher-order cognitive skills (HOCS) such as question-asking, criti- cal-thinking, problem-solving and decision-making capabilities within science teaching have been argued by several science educators for decades. Three main objectives guided this study: (1) to establish "base lines" for HOCS capabilities of 10th grade students (n = 264) in the Israeli educational system; (2) to delineate within this population, two different groups with respect to their decision-making capability, science-oriented (n = 142) and non-science (n = 122) students, Groups A and B, respectively; and (3) to assess the pre-post development/change of students' decision-making capabilities via STES-oriented HOCS-promoting curricular modules entitled Science, Technology and Environment in Modern Society (STEMS). A specially developed and validated decision-making questionnaire was used for obtaining a research-based response to the guiding research questions. Our findings suggest that a long-term persistent application of purposed decision-making, promoting teaching strategies, is needed in order to succeed in affect- ing, positively, high-school students' decision-making ability. The need for science teachers' involvement in the development of their students' HOCS capabilities is thus apparent. © 2010 Taylor & Francis.