Graduation Year

2020

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Ph.D.

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Degree Granting Department

Curriculum and Instruction

Major Professor

Dana L. Zeidler, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Robert Dedrick, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Allan Feldman, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Sami Kahn, Ph.D.

Keywords

Reflexivity, Science Education, SSI, SSR

Abstract

Educational experiences built upon the Socioscientific Issues (SSI) framework provide opportunities for teachers and students to reflectively and reflexively address ill-defined complex scientific issues that affect human beings around the planet. Through the practice of Socioscientific Reasoning (SSR), while grappling with SSI, students have the potential to develop a SSI functional perspective of scientific literacy (SL); functional scientific literacy (FSL). Due to the multidimensional complexity of many human issues in and out of the science classroom, students are required to develop various skills, dispositions, and problem-solving strategies that expand from and connect with a SSI functional perspective of SL. The main focus of this philosophical endeavor is to provide a means to conceptualize the expansion of FSL toward a cross-curricular, student-shaped possibility called Socioscientific Literacy.In order to open-up the topics under scrutiny, SL and Reflexivity, the notion of a deconstructive predicament is presented and explored. The recognition of this predicament allows for the analysis of tacit meanings and hegemonic influences concealed within concepts. Scientific literacy and reflexivity will be conceptually analyzed, personified, and rendered through the deconstructive use of literary and philosophical devices. Following from these analyses/narratives, through four deconstructive maneuvers, a bricolage version of SSR is formulated as a flexible means by which students can grapple with internal/external complexity.

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