Print PageA fundamental challenge for science education is preparing citizens to make informed decisions about socio-ecological issues. Environmental science literacy is the capacity to understand and participate in evidence-based discussions of socio-ecological systems and to make informed decisions about actions and policies. Drawing on science education and decision research, as well as our own research, we have developed an initial framework identifying core practices of informed socio-ecological decision-making. These practices include investigating issues through first and second-hand inquiry, explaining scientific processes and events, making predictions about consequences of course of actions, and combining scientific and social understandings with personal values to decide on courses of action.
We are developing a learning progression describing levels of sophistication that students bring to these practices. This learning progression could be used to identify common challenges students confront in learning to use science in decision-making. In turn, understanding of these challenges can be used to develop and test instructional tools to support students in reaching more sophisticated levels of decision-making practices.
We conducted clinical interviews with 16 K-12 students (8 high school, 4 middle school and 4 elementary school) to identify characteristics of levels of decision-making practices. Interviews engaged students in considering and making a decision about a real world issue (i.e., whether or not a water bottling company should be allowed to extract water from a trout stream).
Results/Conclusions
Based on the interviews, we identified characteristics of lower and upper level decision-making practices. At the lower level, the investigating practice is characterized by trusting one’s own knowledge and that of one’s friends and family; upper level investigating involves giving authority to arguments from evidence rather than individual people. At the lower level, the explaining practice involves using informal understanding of science; upper level explaining involves combining scientific models and theories with specific facts of the case to explain what is happening in socio-ecological systems.
We found that few students are prepared to engage with competence in core practices of environmentally science literate citizens. Thus, we believe that helping to prepare students to be informed decision-makers needs to be a more central focus of the school science curriculum. We are working to conduct further research with students, and to create and test instructional tools to support students in developing the capacity to engage in informed socio-ecological decision-making.
