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, in which students plan & implement small-scale RiNA projects to help overcome STSE harms of their concern – receiving teacher support as necessary and/or as they request it. Such practice RiNA projects can help students develop expertise, confidence & motivation for eventually self-directing later such projects.
Introduction & Overview
As presented in the video at right (below on phones), to deepen students’ attitudes, skills & knowledge (ASK) regarding ASK 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 of concern/interest to students in STSE relationships. For such practice projects, the teacher may provide assistance – as requested by students, and as described, with examples, below.
Student Practise: Project Assignment & Supports
Supports students may need will, of course, vary – depending on, for example, their ages, abilities & experiences with RiNA projects. Firstly, teachers may choose levels of guidance inherent to assessment/evaluation within the assignment sheets. Some students may, then, benefit from a list of possible STSE Issues to address. Others may find a list of ’cause’ & ‘result’ variables helpful. In planning projects, some students then may find our RiNA project tips sheet a useful overall guide. Meanwhile, for secondary research, they may benefit from some insights from a school librarian – as depicted in the video below. For primary research, although some may need assistance with experiment design, most likely may benefit from learning about correlational studies. In terms of actions, students may find descriptions of types of actions helpful. As science students, teaching them about engineering design & popularization may be particularly useful. 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.
