Science & Technology Education Promoting Wellbeing for Individuals, Societies & Environments
Largely because politicians, business leaders and many others struggle to overcome apparent problems – like the climate crisis & job precarity – that appear linked to STEM fields (likely influenced by others), STEPWISE educates students to critique STEM-Society-Environment relationships and develop and implement well-informed personal and/or social actions to overcome harms of their concern in them.
Students’ Research-informed & Negotiated Action (‘RiNA‘) Projects
JASTE School-based Issues
Each of the four school-based issues of JASTE linked above have been edited by school science teachers and feature many students’ reports of their RiNA projects.
Skills Apprenticeship Resource (PDF file)
Graphic Novel About Civic Actions Against Industrial Pollution
Sample Student RiNA Projects
Multi-Actant Documentaries
STEPWISE Theory & Resources Links
STEPWISE in Elementary Schools
Since its inception in 2006, STEPWISE has been mainly explored and developed in secondary school science contexts, including with students in after-school clubs. We have worked with a few teachers in elementary schools, however – as described in the video at right/below. Based on such work, we believe that students in elementary schools are quite capable of developing critical views about science & technology and societies more generally and developing and taking personal & social actions to overcome harms of their concern. However, there are few STEPWISE-informed teaching & learning materials available for teachers’ uses. If you are interested in collaborating with us in action research to develop and field-test STEPWISE approaches in elementary schools, you might review the videos below and then write to larry.bencze@utoronto.ca.
Introduction for Elementary School Teachers
STUDENTS REFLECT
TEACHER TEACHES
STUDENTS PRACTISE