Identifying Pre- and In-service Teachers’ Stances on Teaching Socioscientific Issues: A Systematic Review of Empirical Studies

Résumé En

There is a prevalent consensus among science education scholars that teaching socioscientific issues (SSI) has notable importance for promoting functional scientific literacy and raising responsible citizens. However, teachers encounter numerous problems when teaching SSI, so they may not prefer to teach them. Today, we still do not know many specific particulars about how teachers’ own opinions, beliefs, or experiences influence the way in which they present controversies and which teacher’s role is best suited for teaching SSI. This paper aims to review the empirical studies that include teachers’ stances during teaching SSI and, if stated, their rationales about preferred stances. We employed the Web of Science and Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) databases and Google Scholar to find the relevant literature. Then, we independently screened the titles, abstracts, and full texts of the selected studies for eligibility. Based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement checklist, eighteen empirical studies were included in this review.Three main profiles of teachers’ positions while addressing SSI were identified: excluders, neutrals, and disclosers. Two subprofiles were identified for both neutrals and disclosers. Neutral teaching was found to be the most adopted and preferred teacher position for introducing SSI. It was followed by the avoidance of SSI teaching because the teachers viewed value-free education as important. Teachers’ own opinions, beliefs, epistemological orientations, concerns of indoctrination, and external factors were reported as the main underlying reasons for their preferred positions. Obviously, the studies conducted with in-service teachers yielded different reasoning patterns for their neutrality. We concluded that, given the pedagogical and epistemological challenges of teaching SSI, more research on teachers’ positions in addressing SSI in science classrooms is needed.