by Oliveira, Alandeom W.; Colak, Huseyin; Akerson, Valarie L.

In this study we examine how elementary teachers in Brazil and Turkey approached the translation and subsequent classroom implementation of an instructional activity that promotes environmental awareness through a combination of student role playing and teacher oral delivery of an environmental story about river pollution. A discourse analysis showed that translation into Portuguese was literal, an approach that fostered a classroom implementation that emphasized detached transmission of knowledge (the teacher frequently interrupted her delivery to provide textual, contextual and recontextualizing information to students). In contrast, translation into Turkish was free, that is, with many modifications that led to a decontextualized and detached text. Implementation of this text was focused on the creation of student involvement, being dominated by oral strategies such as religious analogies (heaven and hell), and parallel repetitions of statements of shared guilt. Based on these findings, it was concluded that neither translation promoted an equivalent form of environmental instruction (i.e., involved transmission of environmental knowledge). Furthermore, an argument is made that effective translation requires that original and translated curricula foster analogous levels of involvement (or detachment) as well as equivalent forms of classroom relationships and social roles (pragmatic equivalence).

DOI: 10.1007/s11422-008-9103-3
Online Date: 6/5/2008
Print publication date: 3/1/2009
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by López-Facal, Ramón; Jiménez-Aleixandre, María Pilar

This comment on L. Simonneaux and J. Simonneaux paper focuses on the role of identities in dealing with socio-scientific issues. We argue that there are two types of identities (social representations) influencing the students’ positions: On the one hand their social representations of the bears’ and wolves’ identities as belonging to particular countries (Slovenia versus France for bears, France and Italy for wolves), in other words, as having national identities; on the other hand representations of their own identities as belonging to the field of agricultural practitioners, and so sharing this socio-professional identity with shepherds and breeders, as opposed to ecologists. We discuss how these representations of identities influenced students’ reasoning and argumentation, blocking in some cases the evaluation of evidence. Implications for developing critical thinking and for dealing with SSI in the classrooms are outlined.

DOI: 10.1007/s11422-008-9134-9
Online Date: 6/4/2008
Print publication date: 9/1/2009
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by Sadler, Troy D.

This paper provides a critical analysis of some of the issues raised in Simonneaux and Simonneaux’s analysis of socioscientific reasoning among a group of university level students negotiating three socioscientific issues. I first discuss the labels used to reference approaches in science education that prioritize socially relevant issues and the science related to these issues. I draw distinctions between approaches labeled science-technology-society (STS), the socioscientific issues framework, and les questions socialement vives (socially acute questions), which Simonneaux and Simonneaux introduce. Next, I discuss ways in which Simonneaux and Simonneaux’s use socioscientific reasoning as an analytic construct varies with respect to its initial conceptualization. The primary distinctions include linguistic inconsistencies and the conceptual differences these language choices confer, expansion of the construct to subsume a broader range of practices, and issues related to unit of analysis (i.e., applying socioscientific reasoning as an analytic resource for assessing individual practice vs. group patterns). Finally, the issue of transfer of socioscientific reasoning is addressed. When considering the extent to which and how students leverage experiences and practice relative to the exploration of one socioscientific issue to inform their negotiation of another, I suggest that researchers and practitioners consider the distinction between the content of arguments advanced and underlying reasoning patterns. The tension between embedding science in meaningful, specific contexts and promoting forms of scientific literacy applicable to diverse, socially-relevant issues emerges as an important point of emphasis for educators interested in the socioscientific issues (or socially acute questions) movement.

DOI: 10.1007/s11422-008-9133-x
Online Date: 6/4/2008
Print publication date: 9/1/2009
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