Chinese High School Social Science Issues Resolved And Its Relationship With The Nature Of Science

The fundamental goal of science education is to develop students’scientific literacy. Under this belief, science education should not only improve students’understanding of scientific knowledge, but also develop their ability to solve problems that involved in science and technology. To achieve this objective, several rounds of science education reform were conducted. Recently, socio-scientific issues education was proposed and promoted both by science education researchers and by governments. Socio-scientific issues represent a variety of social dilemmas with conceptual, procedure, or technological associations with science, and typically involve the products or the processes of science and create social debate or controversy. Social (e.g., individual’s ethics and values) and science factors both play important roles in these issues. To solve socio-scientific issues, students have to reason informally on the basis of considering and evaluation the impacts of scientific, social, economic and moral factors. The informal reasoning process is affected by students’belief of nature of science. Although few studies have investigated the relationships between the characteristics of informal reasoning and the belief of nature of science, the relationships are still unclear, especially which about Chinese students. The present study investigated Chinese high school students’informal reasoning on a socio-scientific issue, students’belief of nature of science and the relationships between informal reasoning and belief of nature of science.Sixty-one high school students in Henan province participated in this study. First, participants’characteristics and levels of informal reasoning on a socio-scientific issue about global wanning were investigated. Second, their belief of nature of science on the role of social negotiation in science development, the invented and creative nature of science, the theory-laden exploration, the cultural impacts, and the changing and tentative feature of science knowledge was evaluated. Finally, the relationships between the characteristics of informal reasoning and the belief of nature of science were analyzed. It is found that:(1) Most of high school students in this study were prone to make evidence-based decisions. And they tended to process informal reasoning from multiple perspectives and propose arguments from different orientations such as social-oriented arguments, economic-oriented arguments, ecological-oriented arguments, as well as science-oriented or technology-oriented arguments. Participants proposed least number of science-oriented or technology-oriented arguments. (2) High school students in this study generated arguments for different purposes such as supportive arguments, counter arguments, and rebuttals. In general, students in this study had higher informal reasoning level.(3) High school students in this study tended to identify with more modem and constructive belief of nature of science. Their identification order for different dimensions of nature of science from high to low was the theory-laden exploration, the changing and tentative feature of science knowledge, the role of social negotiation in science development, the invented and creative nature of science, and the cultural impacts.(4) Participants’identification for the changing and tentative feature of science knowledge was significantly positive correlated with the number of science-oriented or technology-oriented arguments they proposed. There were gender differences in the relationship between participants’ informal reasoning and their belief of nature of science.