Our approach

Is cycling to school healthy for us? What are the problems with nanotechnologies? Are the products in our cell phones ethically sourced? How can we make our school more fuel efficient? These are examples of authentic questions.

Authentic questions include the following features. They:

• proceed from questions which interest and engage students (personal authenticity) and through which they express a wish, and choose, to find collective answers (social authenticity);
• involve real-world, complex, ‘wicked problems’;
• are sometimes controversial in nature when there is no overall agreement about solutions or even ways to frame the question;
• are gender inclusive and gender-sensitive;
• are questions or issues that emerge from young people spontaneously or, more likely, with sensitive support from teachers;
• presuppose change in that questions are asked about matters or issues which can be improved, e.g. made more socially and ethically desirable.

These features have implications. A mutually agreed purpose may go beyond the bounds of the school walls for participants, particularly where in finding the answers to questions, students might work with scientists, policy-makers, or other people with expertise. SSIBL might involve interaction either in informal education contexts and/or working with agencies outside the school.

How such questions are raised is central to effective pedagogy in SSIBL. It is important to notice at this stage that all the conditions for authentic questions are unlikely to be satisfied. Students can, however, be taught to generate authentic questions themselves (see Annex I on SSIBL booklet for teachers).

Authentic questions often involve socio-scientific issues (SSIs). SSIs use scientific knowledge to address a social issue. For example, with energy use, young people need to understand the relationship between fuels and energy to appreciate that conservation of fuels is the real cost in economic and social terms. A biological understanding of the importance of oxygen diffusion to the cells that prompts concern about the personal and social harms through smoking, and what might be done about it, exemplifies the relationship between science and social issues. For eco-friendly clothing, the particular chemical and physical properties of titanium dioxide (catalytic, nano-size) make understanding about its global distribution and social justice in production so urgent.

Sometimes SSIs can be in the form of a dilemma or controversy but this need not always be the case. For example, all the participants might recognise a non-controversial problem and work together to find the best way to solve it. However, in other cases there may be real differences between participants. Controversies are deemed to occur when different parties have opposing arguments but where the arguments are bolstered by good reasons . People might agree that climate change is an urgent issue but disagree about the best way to tackle the problem.

SSIs: types of controversy. In SSIs there can be different types of controversy. For example, all stakeholders might agree that action should be taken to clean a local watercourse but they might disagree about the factors responsible for the pollution because the evidence is complex. Stakeholders might also disagree if action should be taken at all because the cost of cleaning up the watercourse might affect the livelihoods of people who work in an industry that contributes to the problem. Such differences of interest are evident in the positions taken by many farmers over cattle tuberculosis in the UK as opposed to those of environmentalists. The UK National Union of Farmers, for example, explain that wild badgers carry the tubercular bacterium and transmit it to cattle, hence the badgers must be controlled through culling. Many conservationists argue that farmers need better husbandry and that badgers are such an important part of the countryside that they must be protected. But there are also uncertainties in the science. Some scientists argue that culling badgers is an effective means of controlling cattle tuberculosis; others that not only is culling ineffective but that in some cases it spreads transmission. There is no single solution to the problem. Core values and preferences also play a role in decision-making.

So, socio-scientific issues are about establishing scenarios which provide a background for raising research questions.

Enaction involves moving from questions to solutions. In doing so research and development for and with people needs to be participative and inclusive, involving inquiry-based learning and an understanding of the links between science and society. These include three perspectives:

• Personal (What does it mean to me?);
• Social (What does it mean to my family, friends, community?) and
• Global (What does it mean more broadly?).

Inquiry-based science education (or inquiry-based learning) is at the stage of ‘enaction’. Students need skills and knowledge to provide the necessary evidence to find solutions to an authentic question. These skills are multi-faceted because they involve collaboration with others, finding out the viewpoints of stakeholders as well as doing experiments.

Doing experiments might involve:

• coming up with ideas and testing them,
• collecting and evaluating data,
• an awareness of uncertainty in the data collected and its interpretation, and possibly
• asking new questions as a result of reflecting on the data.

Having collected evidence, students need to explain how the evidence helps them to answer their questions.

Teachers might want to scaffold student learning, particularly when they are new to inquiry learning. At first the teachers could set a particular question for students to explore. Some of the possible approaches are given in Table 1 where the teacher could have a prepared set of prompts for the students.

Table 1. Example of scaffolded inquiry

One of the distinctive features of IBSE within SSIBL is that the inquiries are open and not predetermined and can involve a range of approaches including experiments, surveys and debates.

Approaching SSIBL through IBSE

Once students have explored a scenario for an issue they need a good research question for their inquiry. Finding a good research question is not an easy task and will need support from the teacher.

First the question has to be researchable and have the following characteristics:

• the question fits the theme or scenario;
• the question is open and the answer not known;
• there is only one question (e.g. what are the main reasons year 9 students in our school give for smoking?) (Note that groups of students in an inquiry can pursue different research questions, as long as each group is only following one question);
• the question is clear and focused;
• the question is feasible: it is answerable and can be addressed in a fixed time;
• data can be collected to answer the question.

The solutions to authentic questions must involve a form of action. By action we mean outcomes which address the original question and result in some kind of change, or in gaining relevant knowledge, or understanding reasons why change might not be desirable.

Actions can be of different kinds such as:

• making an artefact,
• lobbying powerful institutions,
• generating instructional materials,
• promoting institutional change, e.g. school policies,
• holding a forum for a discussion,
• staging drama to an audience to illustrate a dilemma,
• influential writing,
• poster displays to promote further discussion.

Finding a solution may lead to other questions, hence the process is circular in nature rather than linear. Actions may themselves raise further questions so that the process should be seen as spiral and reflexive rather than linear.

How does the action we take generate new questions?

Seeking further evidence

Acting on the evidence

Does the research evidence influence the initial question?

Operationalizing the question

SSIBL supports young people in acting as knowledgeable social agents through citizenship education (CE). SSIBL involves young people making value-laden decisions together, which they then can enact.

In a democratic society all stakeholders should be able to contribute and therefore SSIBL activities should encourage participation and dialogue throughout the activity from raising questions, through carrying out an inquiry, proposing solutions and taking action.

This is a term that is primarily used in science and innovation. The aims of RRI reflect the importance of public and stakeholder participation and mutual responsiveness - working with and for people - to product development in science and technology. In other words, how can science and industry develop knowledge and technology that is socially desirable, ethically acceptable and sustainable?

For example:

• Are genetic testing kits that can be bought via the internet socially desirable?
• How can we limit the exploitation of poor people in the mining industry (what is ethically acceptable)?
• How do we ensure that new processes and products are sustainable from the environmental and political/social point of view?

The term RRI has been coined in recent years. It is a crucial element of the European Union’s recent science and technology policies. The PARRISE project has operationalized the concept of RRI in education.