Science & Technology Education Promoting Wellbeing for Individuals, Societies & Environments
A resource-rich pedagogy preparing students to develop & implement well-informed actions on political economies to improve social & ecological justice
STEPWISE pedagogy (sample here) is used to educate students in STEM-SE, Skills & Products and, for needed ecojustice reforms, prepare them to critique STEM-SE relationships and to design & self-direct networked RiNA projects to overcome harms of their concern; e.g., climate crises, manipulative surveillance & species losses.
STEPWISE opposes neoliberal practices like stratifying inquiry-based learning, sanitized STEM education & public propaganda by directly teaching students – with application activities – about STEM relationships with political economy; e.g., private manipulation of government regulations & private funding.
JASTE School-based Issues
Skills Apprenticeship Resource
Ban the Dust! – Graphic Novel
Uses of Claims from Science & Technology Studies
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