STEPWISE

Science & Technology Education Promoting Wellbeing for Individuals, Societies & Environments
STEPWISE is a framework – with pedagogical resources – that teachers may use to develop lessons and activities that may help students to develop expertise, confidence & motivation for eventually independently developing & implementing research-informed & socially-negotiated socio-political actions to help overcome risks &/or harms of their concern in STEM-SE relationships.

Students’ Research-informed & Negotiated Action (‘RiNA‘) Projects

Teaching & Learning Resources
The resources below – many of which you can download from here – were largely developed by me during my teaching & consulting careers and through action research with practising teachers in several different contexts since 1988 during my scholarly career.

Online Sample Lessons & Student Activities
Downloadable PDF Document
Downloadable PDF Documents
Published Edited Book

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

Teachers Talking About Their Implementation of STEPWISE

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

Students Talking About Their RiNA Projects