New Vision Of Science Education: Socio-scientific Issue Instruction

Socio-scientific issue (SSI) instruction in recent years received considerable attention inwestern science education. It is considered to be an effective way to solve the problem such assolving students’ flexible use of science knowledge, understanding the nature of science,forming a correct view of science, and developing an effective way to participate in socialdecision-making capacity, as well as the moral and ethical development. However,scrutinizing the domestic science education research, we basically still stuck in the stage ofSTS education. Already have been no researcher paid a close attention on SSI teaching systemresearch. Therefore, the author tries to preliminary elaborate with the introduction of thiscontent to arouse the concern of domestic researchers and educators, and hope accordingly itwill promote the development of science education in China.The purpose of this action research was to investigate the feasibility of the integration ofissue-centered approach into junior high school’s science curriculum, and its impact onstudents’ environmental participation attitude and behavior. For the abovementioned purpose,the writer investigated40students of the eighth grade in a junior high school, with acontroversial environment issue, the controversy issues in the location of the incinerationplant, carried on the teaching subject during a30days course. Teaching feedbackquestionnaire is employed after the course and results were statistically analyzed andevaluated. A semi-structure type interview was conducted after sampling10students atrandomly selecting, the writer to understand the differences of students’ scientific attitude andbehaviors, and tried to comprehend how students felt in such class.As below conclusions are hopefully helpful for researchers in future:1. The integration of socio-scientific issues approach into junior high school’s sciencecurriculum is highly efficient and feasible. The socio-scientific issues instruction will greatlyimprove the students’ learning interest, scientific concepts, informal reasoning skills andcritical thinking ability.2. Students are well-understood the contemporary situations of the environment, urgingto cherish the environment, and will take more actions on reducing pollution’s campaign. 3. The students made progress in identifying the problems when they face the issue ofprotecting the environment. After the teaching, most of them could express more positive andnegative opinions and thought ecological issues can be replaced with more alternative plans.4. Most of the experimental students responded positively and aggressively toenvironmental socio-scientific issues in curriculum and hoped that teachers can implementsimilar teaching activities.Finally, based on the research findings, I offer some specific suggestions as a referencefor future research related to environmental socio-scientific issues in issue-centered approach.