Learning that examines complex problems or events can promote capability development and support young people to explore and understand issues, and make evidence-based decisions.
Learning and teaching that promotes opportunities for students to ask questions supports young people to explore, understand and take actions related to complex issues impacting their communities.
These strategies are designed for exploration of COVID-19. However, they can be applied to many different issues that impact communities.
The strategy facilitates learning that supports students to explore a socioscientific issue
The process of exploration and the development of understanding should be continuous throughout the learning journey.
Teachers should develop and map learning objectives to support the direction of the inquiry that they are facilitating.
Learning objectives should identify capabilities (knowledge, understanding, skills, attitudes and values) specific to the direction of inquiry.
Learning that explores the COVID-19 pandemic as an example of a complex issue impacting society could involve one or more learning areas.
Students will gain most if they are encouraged to use capabilities and ways of thinking from multiple learning areas.
There are multiple ways of facilitating this step. The following strategies are effective in facilitating students to explore what they know, and what they would like to find out about.
In this activity students explore the relative importance of a key global issue. There are multiple ways of doing this. A simple strategy is to give out cards with issues that name a health issue - e.g. COVID-19; diabetes; heart disease; etc. Working in small groups, students have to rank the issues and explain why they have selected this ranking. This is a good way of getting students to think about the relative impact of an issue.
A range of strategies are provided in the resource "Exploring Type 2 Diabetes: A socioscientific issue for my community"
New Zealand Edition: - see pages 27-31
Cook Islands edition: See pages 28-32
Students should be encouraged to develop an overview chart that can be used to support the class to identify and summarise evidence related to questions about COVID-19.
An evidence-informed strategy for facilitating a group-work based exploration of evidence is provided in Chapter 4 of "Exploring Type 2 Diabetes in my community". (Download the book from the link). This strategy can be easily applied to the context of COVID-19.
We have developed a simple pamphet about COVID-19 that will stimulate questions.
The pamphlet is currently available in country-specific versions for the Cook Islands. Please contact the LENScience team if you would like a version specific to your country.
Our research has demonstrated that when students engage in exploring socioscientific issues in class, they often become science communicators within their peer group and family. Students also tell us that they appreciate having resources such as pamphlets to help facilitate conversations in their families.
Some students need very little support to engage in conversations in the home. However, we have evidence that structured questions developed at school can support students to lead discussions in their families about socioscientific issues. One way of doing this is to set a task where students develop a short survey to find out what people in their peer group, family, village, sports team etc know about an issue.
The Pacific Science for Health Literacy COVID-19 Vaccinations Pamphlet has been designed to support student-led conversations in the home and community.
Cook Islands schools can access print copies of this pamphlet in either Cook Islands Maori or English. Please contact the Ministry of Education if you have not received your pamphlets or need more.
Reference: Bay, J.L., Vickers, M.H., Mora, H.A. et al. Adolescents as agents of healthful change through scientific literacy development: A school-university partnership program in New Zealand. IJ STEM Ed 4, 15 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-017-0077-0
Teachers should be aware of the potential for exploration of COVID-19 or other health-related pandemic events to trigger emotional responses from students.
Teachers should be aware of how to access appropriate support structures for students in their care.
Teachers should be aware of potential socio-cultural variance within their learning community and take steps to ensure the safety of all students.
The potential for bullying should be considered and appropriate steps taken to ensure student safety when discussing socioscientific and health-related issues.
