Learning to Engage with Science and Technoscientific Issues in a Digital Landscape: The Arrival of Controversy Mapping as a Method for Digital Inquiry in Swedish Upper Secondary Schools.
This project brings controversy mapping as an ‘educational version’ of actor-network theory into the Swedish science classroom. Curricular developments within science education internationally have led to growing classroom engagements with technoscientific and socioscientific issues. Science education has converged on citizenship education as teaching itself has grown more interdisciplinary and ‘issues-based’. While issues-based science education building on a broadened concept of scientific literacy orients students towards isolating the ‘scientific component’ in controversies and engaging in evidence-based reasoning, controversy mapping teaches greater respect for the complexity of issues by equipping students with digital tools and methods enabling them to both visualize and explore how the science and the politics of issues emerge hand in hand. Therefore, the project highlights the different types of agency and citizenship training that different forms of issues-based education promote and the interdisciplinary tensions that such education poses to conventional disciplinary approaches within science education.
Project leader: Åsa Mäkitalo
Project members: Åsa Mäkitalo, Mark Elam, Anne Solli
Duration: 2015-2018
Financier: Vetenskapsrådet
Homepage: https://letstudio.gu.se/studio-3/controversy-mapping
