Science & Technology Education Promoting Wellbeing for Individuals, Societies & Environments
STEPWISE promotes direct (vs. inquiry-based) teaching of apparently problematic networks (dispositifs), including STEM fields, STEM education, capitalists, governments, transnational groups (e.g., WTO), think tanks (e.g, Atlas Network), etc. that seem largely responsible for harms like climate crises, manipulative surveillance & cancers. Students are then educated to critically analyze such networks and implement student-led research-informed & negotiated actions to overcome STEM-SE harms of their concern.
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
STEPWISE Rationale & History
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
If you are interested in learning more about and/or implementing STEPWISE, you can invite me and/or team members to conduct seminars and workshops to help with that. Because we have been developing STEPWISE since 2006, we have developed many teaching and learning resources (many of which are discussed on this website) that we are happy to share. You can choose among topics linked to the graphic at right/ below or request we discuss related ones.
As shown at right/below, action research involves cycles of reflecting on one’s perspectives and practices (P&P), planning new P&P (e.g., based on STEPWISE pedagogy), acting on new P&P, observing (data-collection) their uses with students, and then reflecting again to determine new P&P. Such AR cycles can be conducted by and shared among teachers, teacher educators, student-teachers and others. As elaborated here, here & here, we often study effects of changes in possible ’cause’ variables (e.g., teaching about the Mendelian Paradox) on changes in certain ‘result’ variables (e.g., students’ views about importance of data vs. theories in inquiries). A teacher here describes his efforts to continually improve his teaching, in this case, of actor-network theory – which is a fundamental concept in STEPWISE pedagogy and in research. Such work has led to numerous publications, often including participating teachers.
To get involved, contact me at larry.bencze@utoronto.ca.