Post-conference Workshop by Keynote Speaker Marilar Jiménez-Aleixandre (7A-01-06) [Ticketed]

Embedding Conflict in Task Design to Promote Critical Thinking

To face post-truth challenges, I propose –as one of educational strategies– the development of Critical Thinking (CT). The focus of the workshop is on the features of task –and teaching sequences– design that promote critical thinking and argumentation. I suggest that there is a need for revealing conflicts at the heart of socio-scientific issues (Jiménez-Aleixandre et al., 2019). My standpoint is that to face post-truth challenges it is necessary to acknowledge the inherent complexity of issues such as global warming –I prefer that term over climate change– racism or sexism. Building public discourses against denial and taking actions to stop global warming involve conflicts, both social –within structural dimensions of the issue– and personal –as with lifestyle. Thus, for instance, the benefits of reducing the meat in diets prevalent in Western countries, for the environment –greenhouse effect–, animal welfare and human health may conflict with economic interests and with cultural habits and values. Changing diets could also entail personal conflicts.

The approach draws from Barzilai and Chinn's (2020) work about educational responses to post-truth, in particular three of their educational lenses to address it: 1) Not knowing how to know, how to critically deal with information; 2) Fallible ways of knowing, cognitive biases and limitations; and 3) Disagreeing about how to know, a loss of shared epistemology.

The objectives of the workshop are:– To discuss the meaning of post-truth, in terms of threats to students' and public's capacity to engage in knowledge evaluation, and its impact on science education.– To engage in two embedding-conflict tasks, about global warming, and racism, designed to promote critical thinking and the use of appropriate criteria to evaluate information.– To identify, in the participants' contexts, scientific issues that may be used as topics for building embedding-conflict tasks.

Here is a related reading that you might be interested in: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi8227

Post-conference Workshop by Keynote Speaker Jinwoong Song (TR705) [Ticketed]

(Un)certainty of science: what and how should we deal with it?

In the 21st century, we live in a risk society and the trust in science is being challenged. The belief that science will provide accurate future predictions or the definitive solutions of problems has been shaken, and people's expectations are now shifting to artificial intelligence (AI). In fact, this widespread public disappointment with science stems from a misunderstanding of the (un)certainty of science. In school education, we have placed too much emphasis on the certainty of science. While there was a strong emphasis on the usefulness of established scientific knowledge for known problems, it was less honest about the uncertainty inherent in the process of scientific inquiry into new problems. The core of trust must lie in the 'certain uncertainty of science.' In other words, although science cannot provide definite answers to new and unknown problems, it must be understood that scientific practice has an efficient system in place to minimize the intrinsic uncertainty. And it is necessary to emphasize that this is the most important core of science and the basis of trust. In this workshop, we will discuss (1) how science curriculum and science textbooks deal with (un)certainty in science, (2) what (un)certainties are in scientific knowledge and inquiry processes, and (3) how to deal with such (un)certainty preferably. The workshop participants are expected to share their experiences and opinions as science educators.

Post-conference Workshop by Keynote Speaker Noah Weeth Feinstein (7A-01-07) [Ticketed]

Science education and the richness of human social life: Exploring the implications for teaching

In this workshop, we will draw on the knowledge and contexts of workshop participants to examine how richly social understandings of science and human life can alter our approach to science education. The overall goal is to shift our frame of reference away from the canonical goals of science education and toward the complex, richly social work of public engagement with science.

First, we will establish a common conceptual foundation by examining our own experiences as competent outsiders in different cultural contexts during the global COVID-19 pandemic. We will map our own encounters with science onto the science curricula in our various teaching contexts and evaluate where familiar forms of science education do and do not prepare us for authentic public engagement.

Second, we will use concrete problem situations (some pre-determined, some from our shared experience) to examine how people use epistemic networks to find, interpret, and act on science-related knowledge in personal and civic contexts. We will contrast these problem situations (and the socially varied strategies we use to address them) with the narrower, more individualistic problem situations that characterize school-based science education and examine how and when it is possible to encourage prudent use of epistemic networks within school-based science education.

Third and finally, we will explore what it means to have appropriate respect for science. This will require us to examine the institutional, political, and historical contexts that shape how different people encounter science, and contrast the clear, unambiguous answers that characterize school-based science with the messy, ambivalent, “good enough” compromises we are often forced to make in life outside of school. We will conclude by considering how and when it is possible to introduce a more nuanced and relational idea of respect for science in school.

Post-conference Workshop by Keynote Speaker Hannah Sevian (TR702) [Ticketed]

Post-Truth Science Armor as a Curriculum Emphasis

The major aim of science is to improve the human condition. However, due to the burgeoning of untruth, especially in science, we now face an urgent problem to mitigate the harm of untruth by arming students with tools to differentiate fact from rumor, certainty from speculation, and science from science fiction. This workshop centers four principles: (1) We have an ethical imperative to educate; (2) We have a moral imperative to care for each other; (3) Our connected world requires globalized thinking and local action; and (4) Honoring different ways of knowing is the key to building human capacity to synthesize information. The workshop will offer practical guidance for curricular renewal and the design of educational activity through the lens of a newly proposed curriculum emphasis based on these principles, called Post-truth Science Armor. A curriculum emphasis is “a coherent set of meta-messages… constitut[ing] objectives which go beyond learning the facts, principles, laws, and theories of the subject matter itself – objectives which provide answers to the student question: ‘Why am I learning this?’” (Roberts, 1982, p. 245) The principles will guide our use of tools drawn from research on risk perception and assessment, scientific argumentation, cost-benefit analysis, and mitigation of risk to examine and critique data and claims, and to develop students’ post-truth science differentiation capacities. The overarching goal of the workshop is to offer practical resources for updating secondary and tertiary science education to address the risky uncertain future inherent in our post-truth era. The objectives of the workshop are to: (1) Recognize different curriculum emphases in learning activities, (2) Practice using tools that increase learners’ capacity to face and address post-truth science in a learning activity designed with a Post-Truth Science Armor curriculum emphasis, and (3) Generate actionable steps toward re-envisioning science learning experiences to mitigate the harm of untruth.