Going Beyond STS Education: Building a Curriculum for Sociopolitical Activism
Authors: Hodson Derek 
Published: January 2021

The focus of this paper is on the Science-Technology-Society (STS) initiative, developed in the 1980s, subsequently expanded to STSE to acknowledge environmental concerns and later expanded further to include the provision of opportunities for students to confront socioscientific issues (SSI), often of a controversial and certainly of a topical nature.

The article focuses on the key issues that need to be addressed in building such a curriculum, including selection of appropriate SSI, ensuring access to the necessary scientific knowledge, developing the necessary media literacy to access other material relevant to the issues, fostering the political awareness needed for critical interpretation of issues and building the ethical understanding needed to address the complex issues raised by controversial SSI. Teachers introducing SSI into the curriculum need to be sensitive to the profound emotions that can be generated among students encountering controversial issues for the first time. An understanding of emotional intelligence, emotional literacy and emotional competence is essential, and building students’ capacities in these matters is crucial to helping them deal with potentially stressful and disconcerting learning situations that will inevitably arise.

I argue that a curriculum to build students’ capacity for sociopolitical action on SSI can be developed through a 4-stage model: (1) appreciating the societal and environmental impact of scientific and technological change, and recognizing that science and technology are, to some extent, culturally determined; (2) recognizing that decisions about scientific and technological development are taken in pursuit of particular interests, that benefits accruing to some may be at the expense of others and that developments in science and technology are inextricably linked with the distribution of wealth and power; (3) addressing controversy, clarifying values, resolving ethical dilemmas, formulating and developing one’s own views and justifying them through discussion and argument; and (4) preparing for and taking action on socioscientific and environmental issues. Stage 4 is further divided into learning about action, learning through action and learning from action. Learning about action focuses on learning the skills and strategies of sociopolitical action through movies, biographies and autobiographies, case studies and simulations, role-play and dramatic reconstructions. Learning through action comprises direct involvement in action-oriented projects outside the classroom that are likely to have tangible outcomes and consequences.

The prime purpose of this action-oriented approach to addressing complex and controversial SSI is to enable young citizens to look critically at the society we have and the values that sustain it, and to ask what can and should be changed in order to achieve a more socially just democracy and bring about more environmentally sustainable lifestyles. It almost goes without saying that teachers who introduce SSI into the curriculum need to be sensitive to the need to assist students in dealing with potentially stressful and disconcerting learning situations. It is here that notions of emotional intelligence, emotional literacy and emotional competence can be helpful. Furthermore, there are many reasons why the translation of this kind of curriculum rhetoric into practical action in real classrooms will be extraordinarily complex and difficult. Such a radical change in the nature of the school curriculum puts a whole raft of new demands on teachers; it challenges many of the assumptions on which schooling is traditionally based; it is predicated on a commitment to bringing about extensive and wide-ranging social change at local, regional, national and international levels.