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This study explores the experiences of two teachers participating in professional development workshops focused on supporting implementation of SocioScientific Issues (SSI) and aspects of social justice into STEM classrooms. SSI are ill-defined problems, with a basis in science, but necessarily include moral and ethical decisions that cannot be resolved through science alone. These debatable issues can enhance learning of STEM by engaging students in real-world and authentic problems. The USTRIVE project was developed to foster STEM learning through integrated professional development workshops and the development of professional learning communities to support teachers in the use of SSI and incorporation of aspects of social justice in their STEM classrooms. Two research questions were investigated: (a) To what extent did teachers implement SSI into their lesson planning during the project and (b) In what ways did teachers’ designed lessons change from the beginning of the workshop?
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Limiting Claims about Museums, STEM, and Social Issues
Museum workers believe that museums are critical vectors for social change. The 2022 ICOM definition of museums made claimed that museums are necessary for fixing social wrongs, paths for cultural diplomacy, and venues for advancing a sustainable future. Unfortunately, there seems to be a scarcity of evidence to back up these social impact claims. An effort to synthesize research in the USA published in the first two decades of the 21st century sought to describe what can be considered common understanding in the museum field about how social issues and science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) come together in museum practice. Our study focused on the methods and data reporting: we examined where claims may overshoot what should be considered generalizable fact. To do that, we analyzed a subset of papers assembled through a configurative review of the Museums, STEM, and Social Issues domain in the USA.1 The initial review described the topics and types of research related to our focal subject. Here, we focus on the choices made about the research methods. By selecting only those papers that assessed the intersection of STEM and social issues in museums, we were able to look across three primary sources of knowledge: peer-reviewed journals, grey literature from a national online repository, and dissertations or theses in the ProQuest database. We used these reports to understand whether there is sufficient evidence to make claims about the museum sector or museums as a class capable of supporting the many claims about their impacts. In this case, we focused only on museums’ capacity to use STEM to engage audiences with social issues and acknowledge the exclusion of humanities content as a path for social change.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1906556
- PAR ID:
- 10579431
- Editor(s):
- Diamond, J; Rosenfeld, S
- Publisher / Repository:
- Taylor and Francis Group / Routledge
- Date Published:
- Edition / Version:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 9781003145387
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 300-310
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- Museums STEM Social Issues
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: 356Kb Other: pdf/a
- Size(s):
- 356Kb
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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This study explores the experiences of two teachers participating in professional development workshops focused on supporting implementation of SocioScientific Issues (SSI) and aspects of social justice into STEM classrooms. SSI are ill-defined problems, with a basis in science, but necessarily include moral and ethical decisions that cannot be resolved through science alone. These debatable issues can enhance learning of STEM by engaging students in real-world and authentic problems. The USTRIVE project was developed to foster STEM learning through integrated professional development workshops and the development of professional learning communities to support teachers in the use of SSI and incorporation of aspects of social justice in their STEM classrooms. Two research questions were investigated: (a) To what extent did teachers implement SSI into their lesson planning during the project and (b) In what ways did teachers’ designed lessons change from the beginning of the workshop?more » « less
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