Designing Technology to Foster Socioscientific Reasoning by Promoting Internal Values of Learning

Learning science in the context of socioscientific issues is an instructional approach for fostering students' active citizenship in social issues involving science. This requires a set of thinking practices called Socioscientific reasoning, which has been found challenging for students. We examined the effect of an existing Web-based Inquiry Science Environment (WISE) module, dealing with the socioscientific issue of Asthma in the community, on students' understanding of the Asthma phenomenon. Findings from an enactment with 8th grade students analyzed by questionnaires and scoring rubrics, revealed improvement in scientific knowledge, but not in students' socioscientific reasoning Findings also revealed the potential of the module to support students' internal-values of learning , which were not fully exploited. Based on these finding and on the assumption that performing socioscientific inquiry as part of a community that cultivates internal-values of learning may support the development of socioscientific reasoning, we refined the module towards a second enactment. Refinements employ an innovative technology-enhanced pedagogical approach called Knowledge Community and Inquiry (KCI) . We explain how the KCI technology-enhanced features can support the development of internal values of learning that can foster students' socioscientific reasoning, which we expect to find in following enactments. (מתוך המאמר‎)