The workshop will consist of three phases: 1) an introduction to scientific and ethical literacy, 2) engagement with a socioscientific issue, and 3) a wrap-up and summary discussion of the approach. In modeling a Socioscientific Issues approach, participants will be asked to engage with a current and contentious socioscientific issue: The Dakota Access Pipeline and The Standing Rock Reservation. This conflict is at the intersection of conflicting, economic, ecological, and social values. As such, participants will be analyzing the role that diverse values play in decision-making and how values of the sacred, right to self-determination, and ecological value are often discounted in favor of industrial and commodity values. Articulating a pluralistic landscape of values can ensure that no particular standpoint is marginalized and provides equal consideration for ethical and scientific evidence and reasoning in analysis. This methodology could also be applied to less contentious issues that are involved in the day-to-day such as genetically modified organisms or endangered species.

In considering this issue, participants will engage in the process of socioscientific argumentation, which will require an analysis of evidence and reasoning of arguments developed from different and often competing vantage points. It is our objective to provide science educators, and others, with a pedagogical approach that presents the synthesis of scientific, ethical and social analysis as an authentic, timely, and relevant integration that addresses the challenges that citizens face in pursuing social and environmental justice in our increasingly scientific and technical society.