Supporting Students’ Problem Solving of Complex Real-World Science Problems

Beyond learning about science in the context of real-world and complex problems, new directions in science education are prioritizing students’ application of their scientific knowledge for problem solving to promote scientific literacy. At the same time, initiatives to advance the STEM workforce are focusing on the development of interdisciplinary skillsets that empower students to tackle crucial global challenges. Socio-scientific issues (SSI)-based learning provides opportunities for students to develop deeper understanding of societal problems and to reason about issue resolution using scientific practices and multidisciplinary knowledge. Recent science curricula engage students in problem solving in SSI contexts, but research examining student learning outcomes associated with different instructional approaches is still emerging. This three-article dissertation explores two overarching questions: 1) How can we support SSI problem solving in science classrooms? 2) How do students reason about possible solutions to SSIs? The first article, a scoping review, explores the breadth of curricula which integrates problem-solving as part of SSI-based learning experiences and proposes an instructional approach to engage students in SSI solution-finding. The second article is an empirical investigation of students’ design reasoning in the context of SSI solution-finding, which is a construct derived from engineering design education to examine the negotiation of risks and benefits of solutions (Quintana-Cifuentes & Purzer, 2022). The findings from this study establish a potential link between SSI solution-finding and design-specific learning outcomes. The third article is a deeper examination of students’ evidence-based reasoning when students use models to inform a position or solution. The results from this article operationalize model-informed reasoning as a construct and provide implications for how practitioners can foster model-informed reasoning in science classrooms to support SSI-based learning. Together, these three articles justify the utility of integrating problem solving approaches and SSI-based learning to foster reasoning necessary for addressing complex, societal issues. This work develops an SSI solution-finding instructional framework which can be used by educators to guide students’ problem solving in SSI contexts as well as provides an empirical foundation for learning outcomes associated with this approach, namely design reasoning and model-informed reasoning.