Unifying Themes in Socioscientific Issues-Based Instruction for Scientific Literacy Development

Abstract

This chapter presents the unifying themes in socioscientific issues-based instruction for scientific literacy development. Section 1 presented an overview of how to effectively implement socioscientific issues in the elementary grades to provide students with opportunities to apply science to their everyday lives. Section 2 built upon where the authors left off in section one. In this section, the authors used real-world scientific context to provide opportunities to use character and values and moral reasoning as they think about finding solutions to real-world scientific problems. Section 3 showed the continued use of socioscientific issues with an upward trajectory to enhance scientific literacy at the college level. Section 4 demonstrated socioscientific issues being successfully implemented at the core of the P-12 educational system. In Section 5, the authors revealed the integrative nature among STEM, model-based learning, and socioscientific issues in achieving scientific literacy.