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Socioscientific inquiry-based learning for climate change education: insights from an expert secondary science teacher’s enactment and instructional decision-making

In recent years, socioscientific issues (SSI)-based education has been incorporated with citizenship education and inquiry-based learning within the socioscientific inquiry-based learning (SSIBL) pedagogy. SSIBL is an innovative, action-oriented approach to learning science, ideally placed to teaching about climate change as a SSI.

This study aims to examine an expert science teacher’s instructional decision-making during the enactment of SSIBL lessons in the context of climate change education. Delving deeper into science teachers’ instructional decision-making as they enact such action-oriented approaches for climate change education, can contribute towards our understanding of the intricacies of teaching using the SSIBL approach, of teaching about climate change in particular, and the interrelationship of the two.

The main data collected are reflective interviews using own-perspective eye tracking videos from three one-hour SSIBL lessons co-designed with an expert, female science teacher, and the lesson transcripts. The findings show how the think-aloud videos allow the teacher to reflect on her instructional decision-making, and how tensions arise between SSIBL enactment and current teaching practices, and organisational structures.

Being able to identify these tensions supports the teacher’s agency by identifying areas for development. These areas of reflection can be incorporated into teacher professional development programmes for SSIBL and climate change education.

About the speaker

Andri Christodoulou is an Associate Professor of Science Education at the University of Southampton. Andri joined the Southampton Education School in 2011 after completing her masters and PhD in Science Education at King’s College London. Andri’s research focuses on how productive classroom discourse using frameworks like dialogic argumentation and socioscientific issues can be developed and used in science education. More recently, Andri’s work has focused on the use of socioscientific inquiry-based learning, She is currently involved in the EU-funded Horizon 2020 project, COSMOS, focusing on using socio-scientific inquiry-based learning (SSIBL) in communities of practice as a means of opening schools to their communities.