the educational engagement of the notion of ‘vulnerability’ in sustainability
issues.
The paper of Larry Bencze, Erin Sperling and Lyn Carter of the Ontario Institute
for Studies in Education, Ontario, Canada is entitled ‘Students’ Researchinformed
Socio-scientific Activism: Re/Visions for a Sustainable Future’. The
paper addresses the issue of student-led research into socio-scientific issues as a
means of promoting environmental activism among young people.
As a collection, these seven essays present accounts of practice suggestive of a
diversity of interpretations of the concept of socio-scientific issues and their use
in education. The overarching perspective adopted in the independent
commentaries of Russell Tytler (Deakin University) and Vaughan Prain (LaTrobe
University of Bendigo) allows a comparison of similarities and differences among
these diverse accounts in such aspects as:
- the purposes and curriculum framing the SSIs as interventions in science
education and EFS;
- the pedagogies that underpin the interventions;
- their respective epistemologies, and the tensions between these and the
epistemology of traditional science education.
- the diversity of perspectives around the confluence of thinking about
school science, SSIs, and EFS;
- the challenge that the ‘SSI agenda’ represents to school science
education’s fundamental rationale, goals, learning objectives, methods
and approaches to research;