Socio-scientific issues: a way to improve students' interest and learning?

In the past decade, there has been mounting evidence that the problem has become more acute. Studies, such as those performed under the ROSE project, (Sjøberg & Schreiner, 2006), have indicated that most youth surveyed expressed positive attitudes on the importance of scientific and technological issues to society. However, the students show a diminishing interest. There are four different papers being presented in this symposium. They are from ongoing large-scale projects on Socio-Scientific Issues (SSI). The three first are part of a European project, CoReflect (www.coreflect.org). The forth is from a national project in Sweden SISC (www.sisc.se). The two projects take different perspectives on scaffolding, inquiry and collaboration in SSI. One project is focusing on data-driven inquiry, where collaboration and scaffolding are important aspects. The other has a more pronounced humanistic perspective and focus interest, knowledge and self-efficacy of the students. One project has a designed-based approach with teachers taking part in the developmental phase, while in the other a large group of teachers have implement pre-designed materials. A digital learning environment is used in a collaborative setting in one project, whereas teachers in the other project are using the materials in different ways.