We face severe global environmental challenges such as climate change, plastic waste and loss of biodiversity. To develop sustainable solutions for these challenges, people need skills to deal with them. We need not only profound scientific know-how, but also transversal skills such as critical thinking, creativity, responsible citizenship competences and a forward-perspective.

ENSITE supports this endeavour. Researchers from 11 European countries work closely together to develop an innovative approach which aims at improving higher education by including environmental socio-scientific issues in science initial teacher education.

The creation of these resources has been co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union under grant no. 2019-1-DE01-KA203-005046. Neither the European Union/European Commission nor the project’s national funding agency DAAD are responsible for the content or liable for any losses or damage resulting of the use of these resources.

Within the ENSITE project, our guidelines for open learning environments provide support of the design of a high quality learning environment for Initial Teacher Education (ITE), with a special emphasis on improving future science and mathematics teachers` Higher Education (HE) by including environmental Socio-Scientific Issues (SSIs) in ITE.

Use this module and the guidelines for open learning environments as a basis and introduction of environmental socio-scientific issues for all other modules.

Introducing Socio Scientific Issues by examples and giving theoretical background on socio scientific issues. Support teacher educators in the development of high-quality learning environments for teacher initial education with a focus on teaching environmental SSIs in mathematics and science teaching.

Pre-service teachers will learn:

This module aims to enhance pre-service teachers’ competences in reasoning, argumentation and critical thinking through the use of media reports on environmental SSIs. This module provides resources and strategies to help pre-service teachers to grasp underlying ideas and to create effective learning environments for reasoning, argumentation and critical thinking. At the end of this module pre-service teachers will get an overview on how to use media reports in their classroom practices.  

To provide resources and strategies to help prospective teachers to grasp underlying ideas and to create effective learning environments for reasoning, argumentation and critical thinking. 

To enhance pre-service teachers’ competences in reasoning, argumentation and critical thinking through the use of media reports on environmental socio-scientific-issues (SSI).

The aim of this module is to present a foundation for data collection and data analysis in the light of important socio-scientific data sources to be used in lectures and seminars for mathematics and science students in the initial teacher education (ITE). Through this module, the pre-service teachers will develop competences in planning and carrying out experiments, surveys, or interviews, in collecting, preparing and analysing data and representing it according to the rules of statistical inference.

To present a foundation for data collection and data analysis in the context of environmental data sources to be used in lectures and seminars for mathematics and science students in the initial teacher education.

Providing pre-service teachers with fundamentals on data collection analysis and manipulation for the purposes of science education in and outside the classroom.

Module about “Analysing Big Data” makes clear how environmental socio-scientific issues (SSI) can be a source for mathematics education, more specifically for the domain of data and statistics, with a focus on analysing and visualizing data. Quite often educators and (pre-service) teachers of mathematics find it difficult to think of ways to include (environmental) SSI in their lessons. This module provides them with ideas and concrete activities on how this can be done. 

Educators and (pre-service) teachers of other STEM subjects can use this module to make clear how relevant data are, when working with environmental SSI. The relevance of data (both the raw data as well as the sources that make use of these data) is often neglected, or data and data-visualisations are taken for granted instead of being the object of further exploration and analysis. This module helps to focus more and deeper on relevant data, by providing concrete activities. 

Purpose: 

To let students, explore and visualize datasets and how visualizations can be used to tell (different) stories about environmental issues.

Students develop an understanding of how (big) data can be used to reason about socio-scientific issues (SSIs).

The module Decision making on Confronting Scientific Positions leads to provide resources, strategies, and activities for developing competences of prospective science teachers in decision-making based on example of food provision for the world. Activities proposed in the module aim to enhance pre-service teachers' competences as weighing up different perspectives - scientifically based ones as well as personal ones and to reflect on this process in planning, realization, and evaluation of instruction. Preservice teachers will acquire different strategies for decision-making, understanding of decision-making process, i.e., steps needed to be carried out, evaluation of conditions, results, and consequences. They reflect specific characteristics of decision-making strategies and their relation to mathematics and science education and beliefs on decision-making in relation to food market and their influence on human being. All is proposed by examples of own decision-making cases from everyday life connected with food consumption. Skills to compare different ways of dealing with decision making are included, i.e., acting in the sense of active and critical citizenship versus ignoring evidence and following “leaders” on examples from food-world.

To provide resources, strategies, and activities for developing competences of prospective science teachers in decision-making based on confronting scientific positions on example of food provision for the world. 

To enhance pre-service teachers' competences as weighing up different perspectives - scientifically based ones as well as personal ones and to reflect on this process in planning, realization, and evaluation of instruction.

Module O6 introduces future science and mathematics teachers to the framework topic "Mobility" in an innovative way, providing points of contact between their own life experiences and scientific concepts from science and mathematics. The expected impact is that future teachers will be able to understand the interaction of environmental, technical, and social aspects of environmental SSI and how the heterogeneity of needs in society poses challenges to technological solutions. They will be able to look at the exemplary topic "mobility" from different perspectives and transfer the underlying pedagogical approaches to other environmental SSIs. Module O6 is designed to be transferable to other educational contexts such as teacher training or classroom teaching. 

Raise the future teachers' awareness of which different perspectives must converge in a problem area relevant to everyday life to develop socially sustainable solutions. They should discover that there are meaningful circumstances in the direct everyday environment of the students that can be used for SSI teaching.

In this module future teachers in initial teacher education shall explore the topic of mobility and learning about its potential as an SSI with a special focus on decision making regarding different perspectives.

 

The module O7 is a module for Higher Education to be used in lectures and seminars for mathematics and science students in Initial Teacher Education courses. It focuses on the aspects of environmental SSIs that can be connected to mathematics and science school curricula and on how prospective teachers can include these issues in their teaching. It is innovative since it analyses curricula in relation to environmental issues and connects them to day-to-day teaching by supporting future teachers in adopting such issues in their teaching practices. Moreover, it supports teachers in evaluating and analysing students’ arguments since most of these issues are controversial in their nature.

To show aspects of how environmental socio-scientific issues (EnvSSI) are related to educational objectives, how they are intended in the curricula and can be implemented in the classroom.

The module aims to provide specific directions related to teaching and learning EnvSSIs. 

Socio-scientific issues are value-laden, and our personal beliefs interfere with how we understand and teach them to our students. This module O8 focuses on supporting pre-service and in-service teachers: (a) to understand their own beliefs about socio-scientific issues, (b) understand how beliefs can influence how we teach about socio-scientific issues, (c) provide a tool (a questionnaire) for the teachers to explore their own beliefs, and (d) presents real examples in the form of vignettes about how students’ beliefs interfere in the discussion of socio-scientific issues. 

This module helps preservice teachers recognize how their own beliefs, narratives, cultural backgrounds, and personal identities can influence their choice to teach and how to teach SSI.

 

 

Module O9 is about the plastic dilemma and how this topic can be used in schools. Schools have a responsibility to educate sustainability literate children and one of the overall aims is to promote children’s action competence. To achieve this, we need to work with their knowledge, willingness, and consciousness, and help them to see different perspectives of complex problems, e.g., environmental, societal, and environmental perspectives. Through O9 future teachers get ideas on how to include these three aspects of the plastic dilemma in their teaching, and to prepare children’s participation in societal debates on this dilemma. Experiences from working with one dilemma like this might be useful for other upcoming dilemmas as well. The plastic dilemma is highly relevant both nationally and internationally, and close to children’s everyday life, and therefore a very motivating SSI for children to work with.

 Support pre-service teachers in designing SSI lessons on plastic waste, that are related to ESD and IBL.

Learning dimension: Pre-service teacher get knowledge and awareness about plastic as a waste problem.

Teaching dimension: Support pre-service teachers’ skills to implement SSIs and plastic waste.

 

 

 

Find each activity easily in the Worksheet Content Index.

Module O10 “Lesson Planning – Focus to Methods” supports future mathematics teachers in designing SSI lessons based on the nature of SSI and particular features of SSI. The aim of module O10 is on enabling future mathematics teachers to support their pupils and students in developing scientific competencies, transversal skills like creativity, critical thinking, and reasoning and in taking into account the social, ethical and cultural aspects related to SSI when designing mathematics lessons in context with environmental socio-scientific issues. Future mathematics teachers will learn methods how to redesign existing lessons or projects dealing with SSI and also how to find suitable and motivating topics for designing their own, original lesson accompanied by modern methods for promoting the importance of mathematics competency.

 

In this module future teachers in initial teacher education are introduced to support their students in dealing with complex environmental socio-scientific issues (SSI) by providing a scaffolding framework. Educational research has shown that students often struggle with open problems. Meta-knowledge about the process to be followed can support students in dealing with these tasks and in deciding which step they should perform next. The intention of this module is to strengthen future teachers’ competences in how to use scaffolding and meta-knowledge frameworks to deal with environmental SSI and to develop a deeper understanding of the benefits for their students through meta-knowledge approaches.

A module for HE to be used in lectures and seminars for science and mathematics students in initial teacher education as well as in advanced training for teachers.

The aim of this module is to show pre-service teachers how they can support their students in dealing with a complex environmental SSI by providing a scaffolding framework.

This module O12 fills a gap related to the use of SSI in class and in the preparation of student-teachers. A literature review showed the need to assess and support students in the development of competencies and skills that teachers wish to develop in their students using SSI. This module provides activities focusing on how assessment can be used to support students in developing these skills and competencies. It also provides student-teachers with the opportunity to reflect on how assessment may be integrated as part of lessons involving SSIs.

Discussion on outcomes we wish to achieve when teaching through SSIs and challenges involved in assessing these outcomes.

Involving pre-service teacher in an inquiry involving an environmental SSI related to the use of fireworks in celebrations (Should the use of fireworks be controlled or even banned?) using a science version or a mathematical version.

Using a rubric for self- and peer- assessment as formative assessment during SSI lessons.

See the activities in outcomes.