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Educational Configurations for Teaching Environmental Socioscientific Issues Within The Perspective of Sustainability

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Abstract

Education for Sustainability has become an institutional requirement in many countries. It takes many forms that can integrate the teaching of environmental Socioscientific Issues (SSIs). In this context, we present the French notion of Socially Acute Questions (SAQs). We develop a theoretical frame to analyse educational configurations applied to the teaching of SAQs within the perspective of sustainability. This frame is built with a reference to a matrix integrating attributes of knowledge (universal, plural, engaged or contextualised), teachers’ epistemological postures (scientism, utilitarianism, skepticsm or relativism) and various didactic strategies (doctrinal, problematizing, critical or pragmatic). To illustrate this frame, three situations of teaching-learning are compared.

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Notes

  1. A citizen has a certain number of duties regarding the environment and nature: he turns off lights, he sorts his waste, he saves paper, etc. These daily environmentally friendly gestures are called eco-gestures.

  2. http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/index.shtml

  3. Un agenda21 scolaire, sometimes called «green school» is a variation on the scale of a whole school of the agenda 21 scheme created by the UNO; it defines a programme of educational actions on different themes (energy, transport, waste, etc…).

  4. protected species of butterfly

  5. small bird of prey

  6. a wader

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  1. UMR EFTS, ENFA, University of Toulouse, Toulouse, France

    Jean Simonneaux & Laurence Simonneaux

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  1. Jean Simonneaux
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  2. Laurence Simonneaux
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Correspondence to Jean Simonneaux.

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Simonneaux, J., Simonneaux, L. Educational Configurations for Teaching Environmental Socioscientific Issues Within The Perspective of Sustainability. Res Sci Educ 42, 75–94 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-011-9257-y

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