Students Practise Designing & Implementing RiNA Projects to Overcome STSE Harms
This page provides teachers with suggestions and resources for the Students Practise phase of the 3-phase STEPWISE pedagogy – which can, eventually, enable & motivate students to self-direct RiNA projects to overcome STSE Harms of their concern.
As presented in the video at right (below on phones), to deepen students’ ASK (attitudes, skills & knowledge) regarding that taught by teachers during the Teacher Teaches phase of the 3-phase STEPWISE pedagogy, we suggest teachers encourage students to design and carry out small-scale RiNA projects to overcome harms students determine in STSE relationships. For such practice projects, the teacher may provide assistance – as requested by students.
Student Practise: General Assignments
To further deepen students’ ASK regarding STSE relationships and corresponding RiNA projects, they next should be asked to design & conduct RiNA projects (in small groups or individually) to try to overcome an STSE harm (or controversy) of their concern. These practice RiNA projects should be mostly SD/OE, although teachers may support students in need – thus making them perhaps slightly more TD/CE. If these are students’ first ever RiNA projects, the teacher may provide a guide sheet like that at right/below, some related web-based tools, and/or a more detailed assignment sheet(s) like these.
Teacher Supports for Practice RiNA Projects
Frequently, some students benefit from teacher supports for some aspects of practice RiNA projects. In doing so, we suggest that teachers try to balance teacher vs. student directedness for procedures – while prioritizing open-endedness (see Lock Model) to promote student autonomy. Many students appreciate, for example, drawing from our list of STSE Issues and/or variable mixing set for their topics. Also, in providing students with the assignment sheet for their projects, it may help students to have the teacher review parts of such projects – using, for example, the example shown at right/below (and/or here). As illustrated in the videos below, teachers can then provide some supports, as requested by different students as their projects proceed, for: Secondary Research; Primary Research (perhaps especially about correlational studies and kinds of actions. also see Skills Education); and, STSE Actions & Sample RiNA Projects. Finally, although we would prefer students be intrinsically motivated to develop/implement RiNA projects, asking them to prepare for a public STSE Fair like here can help extrinsically motivate them.
Students Practise: Teaching ASK
Because some (or many) students often lack certain ASK to more independently design & implement RiNA projects, it may be necessary for teachers to provide some relevant possible topics (e.g., as here) and/or lessons & activities prior to them designing & implementing practice RINA projects. It is common, for instance, for students to be unfamiliar with correlational studies (vs. experiments, as illustrated at right/below) as sources of empirical support for claims about the world. Correlational studies seem highly ethical for investigating possible STSE harms, and often are more feasible than experiments. Such mainly skills-based lessons & activities should, again, be mainly TD/CE to ensure all students gain appropriate ASK, but also engage them in more SD/OE activities to deepen their ASK about studies. A sample lesson/activity sequence for a grade 10 science class is provided here. Afterwards, depending on student needs, teachers can provide suggestions for STSE action types, like here.
When the teacher feels it is necessary (after students have been given a RiNA project assignment), the teacher can use suggestions & resources in the videos at right to help students to develop expertise, confidence & motivation for designing & conducting correlational studies and social actions and RiNA projects, overall. Skills Apprenticeship resources, here, also may help – although like this examples, they likely need to be revised (from 2010) to use STSE contexts for skills education.
Resources: STSE Issues List; Sample RiNA Project Assignment Sheet.
RiNA Project Tools
To help students to develop – perhaps collaboratively – RiNA projects, either as practice (in this stage) or as student-led projects (in the next STEPWISE stage, we have provided links to a series of online tools – as illustrated at right/below – for carrying out such projects. As suggested here, the tools are generally arranged in order of conduct of RiNA projects, as illustrated below. Students may choose to use these tools in different orders and repeatedly, as required.
