Abstract Societies around the world face planetary-scale risks, such as climate change, and are in need of contextualized science education in finding solutions to complex problems. Making scientific content accessible across diverse social and cultural groups necessitates a learning structure that is capable of cultivating accessible and inclusive learning. Our research sought to address such educational challenges by developing a pedagogical practice that integrates critical reflection, socioscientific perspective taking, and the Four Quadrants model from Integral Theory. Our innovative teaching and learning model situates science within a moral context through engagement and shifts in perspective by examining both subjective and objective qualities of socioscientific issues. This research developed a curriculum we call socioscientific perspectives (SSP), which we studied by analyzing qualitative data collected from surveys, class discussions, reflective writing assignments, and member checking. Our population involved undergraduate students enrolled in a 16-week college course on climate change. A constant comparison analysis evaluated students’ progression in perspective regarding the impacts of climate change. The findings of this study support that the implementation of SSP as a curricular focus can convey scientific information in critical ways that acknowledge the subjective, intersubjective, objective, and interobjective nature of real-world phenomena. Educators seeking transdisciplinary approaches to teaching critical scientific content would benefit from this study’s ability to package complex subjects like climate change into beneficial teaching and learning practices.
Nolan et al. (2025) studied this question.