Educating students in STEM-SE, Skills & Products so they may critique STEM-SE relationships and self-direct networked RiNA projects to overcome harms concerning them. It opposes neoliberal practices like stratifying inquiry-based learning, sanitized STEM education & public propaganda through direct ‘application-based teaching’ about political economy; e.g., prosumption, regulatory capture & astroturfing.
STEPWISE Pedagogy
Students’ Research-informed & Negotiated Action (‘RiNA’) Projects
Skills Apprenticeship Resource (PDF file)
Graphic Novel About Civic Actions to Overcome Industrial Pollution
Position Statement, L. Bencze (71-page PDF document)
STEPWISE Rationale & History
STEPWISE Theory & Resources Links
Collaborative Action Research
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
Our Action Research
The STEPWISE project has been working since 2006 to promote – through science & technology education – development of critical and activist citizens. Working with me over the years have been teams (like this one) of graduate students, colleagues and teachers to conduct action research – involving cycles of reflecting on existing practices; brainstorming new practices; field-testing new practices; data collection from field-tests; and, reflections on new practices. As elaborated 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). Teachers & others working with us should gain new & better teaching materials and, if they wish, contribute to publications for teachers, academics and others. A teacher here describes his work efforts to continually improve his teaching (in this case, of actor-network theory). If you’re interested, you can write to me about different aspects of our project at: larry.bencze@utoronto.ca.
