Students Use of Scientific Knowledge and Practices When Making Decisions in Citizens Roles

1
Students Use of Scientific Knowledge and
Practices When Making Decisions in Citizens Roles
Beth A. Covitt, Edna Tan, Blakely K. Tsurusaki,
Charles W. Anderson
Introduction
Findings

• A fundamental challenge for science education in
  a democratic country is preparing its citizens to
  make informed socio-environmental decisions. In
  this poster, we propose a framework for analyzing
  how students approach public and private
  environmental decisions and we use the framework
  to analyze decision-making practices of students
  we interviewed about two socio-environmental
  issues. One socio-environmental issue related to
  food purchasing, the other related to water use.
  We explore the following questions
• When presented with a socio-environmental issue,
  how did students investigate and explain the
  issue?
• What consequences did they predict for their
  possible actions?
• 2. What decisions did the students make and how
  did they justify those decisions?
• 3. Given their understanding, what values and
  other resources did they draw on as they made
  their
• decisions?
•  

Methods
We developed two interview scenarios, one about
purchasing strawberries and one about a proposed
water bottling business. We conducted 22
interviews with elementary, middle and high
school students. Interviews were transcribed and
analyzed through a grounded theory approach
(Strauss Corbin, 1997). We then used an
iterative approach to connect the analysis to the
creation of the decision-making
framework.   Making Decisions about Purchasing
Strawberries Students were asked to complete 2
ordering tasks of 8 different strawberry
products. First they were asked to order various
food products from what they deemed most to least
nutritious. This task positioned students as
consumers. Next, they were asked to order the
products from what they thought was most to least
environmentally friendly. In both tasks, they
were asked to explain their reasoning for the
ordering.   Making Decisions about a Proposed
Water Bottling Venture Students were introduced
to a scenario about a company that would like to
drill a well near a trout stream to enlarge their
water bottling business. In the interviews, the
students were introduced to the scenario, asked
to explain the science around the issue, and
asked about how they would respond to the issue.
During the interview, students were presented
with additional information from stakeholders
that they could use to inform their reasoning and
decisions. Decision-making framework Our
framework emphasizes that decision-making is
guided by students Discourses (Gee, 1990, 1991).
Students come to school with primary Discourses
that reflect their communities of practice,
identities, values and funds of knowledge (e.g.,
Moje, et al., 2004 Wenger, 1998). In school and
through other experiences, students may acquire
secondary Discourses, such as scientific
Discourse. Discourses influence how students
engage with issues and make decisions. Students
practices of investigating, explaining,
predicting and deciding are embedded within their
Discourses. The extent and ways in which students
engage in these practices impacts how informed
their decisions will be. While we would not
advocate for a student to make one decision or
another with regard to a socio-environmental
issue, we do place a high value on using science
as a tool to inform decisions. To the extent that
science is relevant, we suggest that an informed
decision makes use of scientific understanding.
Discussion and Implications

• Reliance on out-of-school funds of knowledge and
  salient identities.
• Our data show the prominent role that factors
  other than school science played in students
  decision-making practices. Students funds of
  knowledge and identities provided entry points
  that influenced how the students engaged in a
  scenario. The students who had everyday
  practices, such as being a fisherman or an
  athlete, had an interest in the scenarios and
  usually drew on knowledge from these practices
  more than school science.
• What is the role of school science?
• There was very limited use of school science in
  students decision-making practices. Water
  scenario students tended to invoke school science
  more than the strawberry-scenario students. This
  may be due partly to the way the two Think-Aloud
  scenarios were structured. Water students were
  asked to construct a narrative of watersheds
  before they were presented with questions, while
  strawberry students constructed narratives after
  they had ordered the products as explanations for
  their decisions. In addition, while students
  learn about the water cycle and about concepts
  such as food webs and food chains in school,
  teaching about food supply chains and waste
  disposal chains and the impact of these on
  natural systems are not a salient part of the
  K-12 curriculum.
• Questions our research raises
• How can school science help students think
  critically about socio-environmental issues?
• What sort of science content should be taught in
  school that is relevant to the everyday
  socio-environmental decisions students have to
  make?
• How should the content be taught so that it
  resonates with students out-of-school identities
  and funds of knowledge?

References Gee (1990). Social linguistics and
literacies Ideology in Discourse. London
Falmer. Gee, J. P. (1991). What is literacy? In
C. Mitchell K. Weiler (Eds.), Rewriting
literacy Culture and Discourse of the other (pp.
3-11). Westport, CT Bergin Garvey. Moje, E.,
Ciechanowski, K. M., Kramer, K., Ellis, L.,
Carrillo, R., Collazo, T. (2004). Working
toward third space in content area literacy An
examination of everyday funds of knowledge and
Discourse. Reading Research Quarterly, 39(1),
38-70. Strauss, A., Corbin, J. (eds.) (1997)
Grounded Theory in Practice. London Sage
Publications. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of
practice Learning, meaning, and identity.
Cambridge Cambridge University Press.
Figure 1. Framework for analyzing students
decision-making Discourses and practices