Developing future-scaffolding skills through science education

Can science teaching contribute to developing skills for managing uncertainty towards the future and projecting imagination forwards? If so, how? In this paper, we outline an approach to 'teach the future' through science education. In the first part, we describe a framework that has been constructed to orient the design of teaching modules comprised of future-oriented educational activities. Then, a teaching module on climate change is described. The module was tested in a class of upper secondary school in Italy (grade12) and the main results are reported. They concern a change in perception of the future, as revealed by students: from far and unimaginable, the future became conceivable as a set of possibilities, addressable through concrete actions and within their reach, in the sense that they became able to view themselves as agents of their own future. The results lead us to argue that the approach appears promising in developing 'futurescaffolding skills', skills that enable people to construct visions of the future that support possible ways of acting in the present with one's eye on the horizon

Exploring students’ epistemological knowledge of models and modelling in science:results from a teaching/learning experience on climate change

The scientific community has been debating climate change for over two decades. In the light of certain arguments put forward by the aforesaid community, the EU has recommended a set of innovative reforms to science teaching such as incorporating environmental issues into the scientific curriculum, thereby helping to make schools a place of civic education. However, despite these European recommendations, relatively little emphasis is still given to climate change within science curricula. Climate change, although potentially engaging for students, is a complex topic that poses conceptual difficulties and emotional barriers, as well as epistemological challenges. Whilst the conceptual and emotional barriers have already been the object of several studies, students\u2019 reactions to the epistemological issues raised by climate changes have so far been rarely explored in science education research and thus are the main focus of this paper. This paper describes a study concerning the implementation of teaching materials designed to focus on the epistemological role of \u2018models and the game of modelling\u2019 in science and particularly when dealing with climate change. The materials were implemented in a course of 15 hours (five 3-hour lessons) for a class of Italian secondary-school students (grade 11; 16\u201317 years old). The purpose of the study is to investigate students\u2019 reactions to the epistemological dimension of the materials, and to explore if and how the material enabled them to develop their epistemological knowledge on models

FEDORA. Excerpts from essays on students’ future perception. Italy

The data set consists of a selection and organization of pre-existing raw data on students’ future perception. This raw data have been collected in Italian implementations of the Erasmus+ project “I SEE” (GA 2016-1-IT02-KA201-024373, https://iseeproject.eu) and consists of more than 100 anonymized essays on “a typical day in 2030 or 2040”. In these essays, 17-19 years old students describe how they imagine their future (the job, the technologies, the social and natural environments). The dataset includes transcriptions of the most relevant parts of “I SEE” essays and the results of their quantitative and qualitative software analysis. The aims of these analyses are to build a framework on students (15-19 years old) perception of the future and to point out markers for assessing eventual changes in students’ perception of the future, through teaching

Recognition and operationalization of Future-Scaffolding Skills : Results from an empirical study of a teaching-learning module on climate change and futures thinking

This article takes its point of departure from the younger generation's problematic relationship with time and the future. A general sense of changeability and directionlessness in society compromises young people's confidence in themselves to make a difference as individuals in important global issues affecting their futures, such as climate change. Given recent aims and commitments of science education to promote sustainable development and student agency, this study explores how science teaching can help students imagine and face possible future scenarios and develop agency in the present to influence them. This article presents a science education approach to equip secondary school students with skills of futures thinking and agency that we call "future-scaffolding skills." It also shows the process of building an operational definition for recognizing those skills in students' discourse and actions. For this purpose, an empirical study was carried out in the context of a teaching-learning module on climate change, consisting of activities inspired by the field of futures studies. Essays, individual and group interviews, questionnaires, and video recordings of students' final projects were collected from 24 students (16-19-years old) from three European countries. The results contribute to operationally defining "future-scaffolding skills," consisting of "structural skills" (the ability to recognize temporal, logical and causal relationships and build systemic views) and "dynamical skills" (the ability to navigate scenarios, relating local details to global views, past to present and future, and individual to collective actions).Peer reviewe

The I SEE project : An approach to futurize STEM education

In the world where young people feel that the future is no longer a promise but a threat, and science and technology are sources of fears and global problems, a challenging task for education is to support students in imagining a future for the world and for themselves. The aim of the EU-funded project “I SEE” is to create an approach in science education that addresses the problems posed by global unsustainability, the uncertainty of the future, social liquidity and the irrelevance of STEM education for young people. This way, we believe, STEM education can support young people in projecting themselves into the future as agents and active persons, citizens and professionals, and open their minds to future possibilities. In this paper we propose a teaching and learning approach for futurizing science education, and describe how that approach was used to develop the first I SEE module implemented in summer school in June 2017 with students from three countries. In sum, the I SEE teaching and learning approach consists of three stages and learning outcomes connected to each of them: encountering the focal issue; engaging with the interaction between science ideas and future dimensions, and synthesizing the ideas and putting them into practice. The middle stage of the model is the main part, involving future-oriented practices that turn knowledge into future- scaffolding skills. We describe four kinds of such future-oriented practices: a) activities to flesh out the future-oriented structure of scientific discourse, language and concepts; b) activities inspired by futures studies or by the working life and societal matters; c) exposure activities to enlarge the imagination about possible future STEM careers; and d) action competence activities. We conclude the paper by reflecting on our experiences of the implementation of the climate change module with upper secondary school students.In the world where young people feel that the future is no longer a promise but a threat, and science and technology are sources of fears and global problems, a challenging task for education is to support students in imagining a future for the world and for themselves. The aim of the EU-funded project “I SEE” is to create an approach in science education that addresses the problems posed by global unsustainability, the uncertainty of the future, social liquidity and the irrelevance of STEM education for young people. This way, we believe, STEM education can support young people in projecting themselves into the future as agents and active persons, citizens and professionals, and open their minds to future possibilities. In this paper we propose a teaching and learning approach for futurizing science education, and describe how that approach was used to develop the first I SEE module implemented in summer school in June 2017 with students from three countries. In sum, the I SEE teaching and learning approach consists of three stages and learning outcomes connected to each of them: encountering the focal issue; engaging with the interaction between science ideas and future dimensions, and synthesizing the ideas and putting them into practice. The middle stage of the model is the main part, involving future-oriented practices that turn knowledge into future- scaffolding skills. We describe four kinds of such future-oriented practices: a) activities to flesh out the future-oriented structure of scientific discourse, language and concepts; b) activities inspired by futures studies or by the working life and societal matters; c) exposure activities to enlarge the imagination about possible future STEM careers; and d) action competence activities. We conclude the paper by reflecting on our experiences of the implementation of the climate change module with upper secondary school students.In the world where young people feel that the future is no longer a promise but a threat, and science and technology are sources of fears and global problems, a challenging task for education is to support students in imagining a future for the world and for themselves. The aim of the EU-funded project “I SEE” is to create an approach in science education that addresses the problems posed by global unsustainability, the uncertainty of the future, social liquidity and the irrelevance of STEM education for young people. This way, we believe, STEM education can support young people in projecting themselves into the future as agents and active persons, citizens and professionals, and open their minds to future possibilities. In this paper we propose a teaching and learning approach for futurizing science education, and describe how that approach was used to develop the first I SEE module implemented in summer school in June 2017 with students from three countries. In sum, the I SEE teaching and learning approach consists of three stages and learning outcomes connected to each of them: encountering the focal issue; engaging with the interaction between science ideas and future dimensions, and synthesizing the ideas and putting them into practice. The middle stage of the model is the main part, involving future-oriented practices that turn knowledge into future- scaffolding skills. We describe four kinds of such future-oriented practices: a) activities to flesh out the future-oriented structure of scientific discourse, language and concepts; b) activities inspired by futures studies or by the working life and societal matters; c) exposure activities to enlarge the imagination about possible future STEM careers; and d) action competence activities. We conclude the paper by reflecting on our experiences of the implementation of the climate change module with upper secondary school students.Peer reviewe

04 - Case studies : I SEE project

In this document we report the main research-based studies we carried out in order to monitor the impact of the I SEE modules on students’ learning and on students’ perception of the future. The case studies have been developed through the analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data collected by means of a multiplicity of tools: questionnaires, individual interviews, collective discussions, tutorials, audio/video records, specific grids and board diaries for observations. The specific tools for data collection have been chosen and designed to cover both individual development and collective dynamics. In order to guarantee the credibility, reliability and robustness of the data analysis and the results, a detailed description of the whole analytic work will be carried out and documented in this report for each case. Data have been collected during the two-round I SEE module implementations (“start-up I SEE module” O1 and the “I SEE modules” O2). The main results discussed here concern the data collected during the implementation of the start-up I SEE module (O1) in the Summer School (C1). In Chapter 3 we include the results about the analysis of data collected during the implementation of I SEE module on quantum computing (O2) in Finland; moreover, we refer here to the list of these developed at the University of Bologna and the University of Helsinki about the project. The analysis of the case studies translates into finding a way to not only explain what happens in the implementation of an I SEE module, but also what conditions are needed to overcome obstacles and maximise the probabilities of repeating successful experiences in different contexts. Moreover, the results allow to argue in deep detail what learning outcomes and skills can be developed through the implementation of the I SEE modules and how a teacher can reveal, monitor and evaluate them. The main results, indeed, of the whole process of investigation has been the list of the markers that can reveal the impact of students’ perception of the future (the widening and approaching markers) (see case study #1,2,3) and the markers that operationally define the future-scaffolding skills (see case study #3). The case studies are the basis for research papers that have been presented in national and international conferences and submitted to journals in science and mathematics education or to journals in the learning sciences. The published papers are reported in the Annexes

Enhancing relevance and authenticity in school science: design of two prototypical activities within the FEDORA project

We live in a historical period that sociologists call the “society of acceleration”, where changes, mainly triggered by science and technology, occur over increasingly shorter time intervals. International reports by the OECD, the European Commission, and UNESCO highlight a worrying detachment between scientific education at school and societal issues, in terms of topics and practices. To address this gap, the H2020 project FEDORA1 designed and implemented several school activities centered around topics related to current challenges, aimed to increase students’ feeling of relevance toward formal scientific education. These implementations are: (i) based on the three FEDORA framework’s theoretical pillars: interdisciplinarity, search for new languages, future-oriented education; (ii) informed by some FEDORA’s recommendations to curricula developers, then turned into operational design principles: cross and integrate different disciplines, elicit epistemic emotions, embrace and embed complexity and uncertainty, dismantle dichotomous thinking and telling, exercise scenario building and thinking about the future in a pluralistic way. After presenting the general framework and the recommendations, we will discuss the details of two activities (“Mocku for change,” “Physics of clouds”) which, respectively, exploit the use of creative writing and mockumentary as forms of new languages. They concern topics such as sustainability or complexity and are aimed to help students engage and make sense of contemporary challenges in a personal and emotional way. In the end, we will argue why we consider them to be examples of practical and (to some extent) reproducible activities in class, which could reduce the gap between science at school and science outside school; in this sense, we claim to shed light on possible ways by which formal educational systems can reposition themselves to deal with societal needs

Future-oriented science education manifesto

As citizens of the world, we are dealing with all kinds of complex issues and challenges, such as climate change, global health, multiculturalism, social justice, artificial intelligence and new technologies. These challenges require us to build visions of the future that empower our actions today. This will define the future for all of us. Research shows that people expect the future to be greatly influenced by science and technology. We, however, need to ensure that the advancements in science are in line with the futures we envision. It is, therefore, essential to think critically about the possibilities and pitfalls of science-driven innovations and to connect them in an interdisciplinary way. This will increase scientific literacy, agency, and responsible research and innovation. Significant overlap exists between futures thinking skills and scientific competencies, such as problem-solving and critical and creative thinking. However, extending the scientific competencies with additional skills related to futures thinking, like time perspective, agency beliefs, openness to alternatives, systems perception, and concern for others, will further enrich science education and prepare students for tomorrow. We, therefore, share: 10 RECOMMENDATIONS TO STIMULATE FUTURES THINKING IN YOUR CLASSROOM.Non peer reviewe