Enhancing Indonesian college students’ views of social responsibility of scientists and engineers: The enact model intervention

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the effects of the ENACT model on promoting Indonesian college students’ views of social responsibility of scientists and engineers. The ENACT model emphasized the students’ epistemological understanding of science and technology using socio-scientific issue (SSI) approaches to enhance the social responsibility, and their science/engineering practices and experiences of taking action to resolve the issues. A total of 80 college students enrolled in a chemistry course in a university in Indonesia participated in the study, 40 of which majored in chemistry education, and the other 40 majored in chemical engineering. An instructor taught and implemented the ENACT project over 10 weeks as a part of the course. Data was collected by a questionnaire called “views of social responsibility of scientists and engineers (VSRoSE)” to explore the changes in students’ views on social responsibility. The participating students responded to the questionnaire before and after the intervention. In results, the effects of the ENACT project were notable in the chemical engineering (ENG) group. The chemistry education (EDU) group scored much higher than the ENG group in all the eight factors of VSRoSE in the pre-test. However, the score patterns changed after the intervention. The EDU group still exhibited high scores, but not much changed. The ENG group scores significantly increased in five factors and have presented similar score patterns with the ones of the EDU group.