2021年9月15日晚上7:00-10:00,SSI-L项目初中组在腾讯会议室举行在线研讨活动。本次研讨共有7所学校分享其新学期的选题、设计与开展计划,指导专家与其他基地校老师对各校选题进行点评并给出建议。会议由初中学段负责人,山东省威海市教育教学研究中心初中教研室张涛主任主持,各学段基地校骨干教师、学科指导专家等参与了本次研讨。
浙江省杭州市三墩中学吴幸春老师分享了该校的议题《饮用水》的设计情况以及遇到的困难。该议题由学校自来水变黄事件引出,主要探讨将自来水净化为饮用水过程的相关问题。目前,团队老师已完成的五星图与各单元驱动型问题的设计,但目前存在争议点不明确、评价量表难以设计、难以利用实验室仪器模拟水净化实验三个主要问题。
彭梦华老师认为,饮用水的主题贴近学生生活,但目前国内的自来水污染现象十分严重,且议题涉及到购买饮用水相关的经济问题以及自来水净化的政策问题。此外,该选题易于引导学生进行过滤、沉淀等化学实验,难度符合初中生的能力水平。
张涛老师针对设计问题给出了针对性建议,张老师指出,争议性是社会性科学议题学习的重要特征,原先的题目“能喝上安全的饮用水吗?”争议性不足,可以改为“怎样喝上安全的饮用水?”,将议题的重点放于净化水的措施,并在此过程中综合分析各方面的因素。
林静老师针对该议题的设计和实施提出了三点具体意见。林老师指出,该议题首先需要和上学期的“水体富营养化”产生一定的关联,以促进学生学习的连贯性。其次,议题设计需要融合跨学科要素,加入经济、政策等方面的探讨以更贴近学生生活。最后,议题学习可以从日常生活和国家社会两个层面开展,其包含的科技问题涉及饮用水标准,要引导学生富有科学性地议论解决现存中的饮用水问题。
贵州省贵阳第一实验学校唐锐老师介绍了本校议题“十二背后溶洞的保护与开发”。该议题具有浓厚的贵州特色,其争议点主要集中在怎样开发能够确保溶洞的可持续发展。由于议题涉及地理、物理、生物、化学等多学科知识,学校团队拟在七、八、九三个年级开展侧重点不同的议题课程。在课程中学生将亲自探索溶洞的相关情况,并提出针对性的建议和意见。
林静老师指出,该议题设计三维科学素养的融合与多学科知识的融合并不容易。林老师建议该议题设计可以将原先的三学段设计转换为在一个学段中的三阶段:其一是认识世界的奥妙,理解溶洞的形成;其二是人类开发和利用自然时需要考虑其对相关动植物的影响;其三是加入少数民族的传统文化渗透来谈开发利用,在整个课程中融入德育和美育的要素。
张涛老师指出,该议题需要删繁就简,建议保留与保护开发相关的内容,其余主题内容可以考虑删除,避免将社会性科学议题变为繁杂的探究式学习。
山西省临汾市解放路学校吉青青老师介绍了本校议题“转基因玉米大量引入国内的利与弊”。吉老师指出,该议题承接自原先议题“转基因大豆大量引入国内的利与弊”,根据先前经验将活动计划进一步精炼,并建构了完善的议题模型。该议题在新一批学生中开展,旨在于进一步打磨出更完善的转基因议题。
林静老师指出,议题设计团队首先需要明确目前市面上的玉米是否大部分是转基因食品,了解该问题有助于设计时贴近学生生活,使学生更好地卷入议题学习。此外,林老师建议议题一定从贴近学生的食品安全问题出发,随后进一步拓展到国家的经济政策和基因工程问题。
彭梦华老师指出,转基因的话题与学生的实际生活距离较远,若要顺利开展议题,团队需要首先界定转基因的含义,并且对转基因问题的个人的安全性层面和国家粮食政策层面均展开探讨。
张涛老师指出,转基因食品的安全性问题是全球的热点问题之一,但目前尚无定论。初中生能够将该议题讨论到何种程度是学校团队需要考虑的问题。
山东省威海世昌中学孔鹏飞老师汇报了本校团队对议题的思考情况。经过两个学期的实践,世昌中学确定了以环保为主题,融合威海特色的海洋主题系列议题开发计划。在前期的设计中,该校确定了“海洋油气开采”、“海洋药品开发”、“海底隧道”、“海洋牧场”以及“海水淡化”五个备选议题。此外,孔老师指出了目前项目开展实验器材不足、学生学科知识难以衔接以及新教师经验不足等三个问题。
彭老师建议该校在“道路桥梁隧道”和“海水淡化”两个议题中选择,因为这两个议题与物理的联系更加密切,更符合团队教师的专业水平。
林静老师指出,世昌中学需要首先判断议题的社会影响性,社会性是议题存在争议点的前提;其次,团队需要考虑议题的可行性,确保议题符合学生的认知水平;最后,团队可以按照顺序依次推进议题,首先开展当地重点关注的话题。
张涛老师指出,世昌中学团队需要进一步思考如何将设想转化为结构不良、可以议论的议题。
北京外国语大学瑞安附属中学薛孝锋老师分享了本校的新议题“你会选择科技眼吗?”,该议题是先前一系列视觉相关议题的进一步深化,涉及个体对高新科技改造身体的开放心态以及健康和经济意识。议题开展前期,团队拟结合物理学知识让学生体会人眼的局限性,并在议题后期进入对科技眼应用于人体的争议讨论。
彭梦华老师指出,团队议题一直以来对眼镜的关注是值得肯定的,但是从技术上看,科技眼是一项十分尖端的科技,可能与学生的距离较远,建议团队可以考虑从扩充眼睛功能的角度出发,以较小的切入点探讨议题。
林静老师指出,学生的视力保护是值得研究的话题,但是科技眼本身和学生距离较远,很容易陷入单纯的知识拓展学习,而非社会性科学议题学习。林老师强调,重知识拓展而轻联系学生实际的议题研究探讨是偏离社会性科学议题学习项目宗旨的,希望团队老师能够借鉴其他学校的设计经验,进一步思考社会性科学议题的价值取向。
山东省威海市望海园中学安同娟老师介绍了本校初拟的议题“废旧衣物翻新销售是否值得推广?”该议题源于学生在生活中发现的问题,与日常生活息息相关。团队教师通过前期的资料收集,确定了针对掩埋焚烧和翻新销售两种衣物处理方式的争议展开探讨。但目前的议题设计还存在争议程度不足以及科学性较少两大问题。
彭梦华老师指出,废旧衣物回收问题是垃圾分类问题的细化,符合目前的时代特征。在生活情况改善的背景下,该议题能够帮助学生树立节约资源的意识,并进一步在企业的角度上讨论生产过程中的资源问题。
贵州师范大学的杨珺老师指出,驱动性问题的设计是社会性科学议题学习的重中之重,一切小问题和小活动都是对驱动性问题的拆解和细化。具体来说,杨老师建议将所有小问题进行细分,区分出描述性的问题以及探究相关或因果关系的问题,并调动学生采用不同的方法进行调查研究。
林静老师指出,团队需要首先明确废旧衣物与其他垃圾的主要区别,从国际视野来说,国外目前的衣物循环再售已是十分常见的市场活动。林老师同时指出该议题的社会性有余而科技性不足,难以构建出宽广的活动设计,在后续的设计中,团队老师需要进一步思考如何使议题具有探究性。
山西省太原市尖草坪实验学校仇子云老师分享了本校议题“传统饮食是否健康”的设计情况。该议题在传统饮食和现代饮食碰撞的大背景下,针对山西的饮食文化开展探讨。经过上学期一个学期的实践经验,团队老师目前将笼统的山西饮食聚焦到具体的太原传统小吃“头脑”上,重点分析该食品无法广泛流传的原因。目前议题设计中存在争议性不明确,社会性模糊,知识拓展负担较重等问题。
林静老师指出,该团队能将议题聚焦的思路很好,但目前的议题设计未能很好地体现出社会性科学议题的特性。林老师建议可以从学生日常平衡膳食的角度切入,围绕健康饮食来融入当地特色饮食,并确定议题的科学性和争议性所在,最后推进到学生充分认识、体验与认可山西传统而有营养的特色食品。
本次会议是初中组本学期第一次议题研讨活动,七所学校各自分享了自己的议题设计情况,相关学科专家提供了针对性的建议和指导。俗语道“靡不有初,鲜克有终”,本次会议对各校议题设计问题的研讨为本学期社会性议题学习课程的有序推进打下了扎实基础。相信通过对议题问题的再反思和再研讨,各校教师能够对社会性科学议题学习的开展产生更深刻的认识,顺利推进本学期的项目实施活动。
图1 研讨会议剪影
On September 15, 2021, from 7:00-10:00 pm, the Middle School Group of the SSI-L project held an online meeting via the Tencent conference room. A total of seven schools shared their topic selection, design and development plans for the new semester, where the subject experts and other partner school teachers commented and gave suggestions on each school. The meeting was hosted by Zhang Tao, Leader of the Middle School Group, and Director of the Middle School Teaching and Research Department of Weihai Education and Teaching Research Center in Shandong Province, with the participation of subject experts as well as backbone teachers from each partner school.
Ms. Wu Xingchun, from Sandun Middle School in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, shared the design of the topic “Drinking Water” in her school and the difficulties they encountered. The topic was introduced by the incident of the school’s tap water turning yellow, and focused on the issues related to the process of purifying tap water into drinking water. At present, the team already completed the design of the five-star diagram and the unit-driven questions, but currently there were still three major problems: unclear points of contention, difficulty in designing the evaluation scale, and difficulty in simulating water purification experiments using laboratory instruments.
According to Mr. Peng Menghua, the topic of drinking water was close to students’ daily life. Nowadays, the pollution of tap water in China was rather serious. This topic involved the economic problems related to the purchase of drinking water as well as the policy issues of tap water purification. It was also easy to guide students to conduct chemical experiments such as filtration and precipitation, and the difficulty was in line with the ability level of middle school students.
Mr. Zhang Tao gave targeted advice on the design of the questions. He said that controversy was an important feature of learning social-scientific issues. The original topic “Can We Drink Safe Drinking Water?” was not controversial enough, which could be changed into “How can we drink safe drinking water?”. By doing so, the focus could be shifted to water purification measures, and teachers could analyze all the factors in the process.
Dr. Lin Jing made three specific comments on the design and implementation of the topic. She pointed out that the topic should firstly be related to “Eutrophication of Water” in the previous semester to ensure the coherence of students’ learning. Secondly, the design of the topic needed to integrate interdisciplinary elements and include economic and policy discussions to be more relevant to students’ daily life. Finally, the topic could be developed at both levels of the daily life and national society. It covered scientific and technological issues related to drinking water standards, which should lead students to discuss scientifically to solve the existing drinking water problems.
Tang Rui, from Guiyang No.1 Experimental Middle School in Guizhou Province, introduced the topic of “Conservation and Development of Shierbeihou Karst Caves”. The topic had strong regional features of Guizhou. Its controversial points mainly focused on how to ensure the sustainable development of karst caves. Since the topic involved geography, physics, biology, chemistry and other subjects, the school intended to develop a curriculum with different focuses in grades 7, 8 and 9. In the course, students would explore the karst caves themselves and come up with suggestions.
Dr. Lin Jing said that it was not easy to integrate a three-dimensional scientific literacy and multidisciplinary knowledge into the design of this topic. She suggested that the topic design could be converted from the original three-learning-phase design to three learning stages in each phase: one was to recognize the wonders of the world and understand the formation of karst caves; the second was that humans need to consider the impact on related plants and animals when developing and using nature; the third was to add the traditional culture of ethnic minorities to talk about development and utilization, and integrate elements of moral and aesthetic education in the whole curriculum.
Mr. Zhang Tao pointed out that the topic needed to be simplified, suggesting that the content related to conservation and development should be retained and the rest could be considered for deletion to avoid turning a socio-scientific issue into a complicated inquiry-based learning topic.
Ms. Ji Qingqing from Jiefang Road School in Linfen, Shanxi Province, introduced the topic of “Pros and Cons of Introducing a Large Amount of Genetically Modified Corn into China”. She said that the topic was a continuation of the original one “Pros and Cons of Introducing Genetically Modified Soybeans into China”, and that the activity plan was further refined based on previous experience. A refined model of the topic was finally constructed. The newly modified topic was carried out with a new group of students, with the aim of being further refined.
Dr. Lin Jing pointed out that the topic-design team first needed to clarify whether most of the corn currently on the market was genetically modified food or not, and understanding this issue would help to design it more closely to students’ daily life and make them better involved in the issue learning. In addition, she suggested that the issue must start from food safety issues which are close to students, and then further expand to national economic policies and genetic engineering issues.
Mr. Peng Menghua thought the topic of genetic modification was quite far from students’ daily life to carry out the topic successfully, the team needed to first define the meaning of genetic modification and discuss its safety aspects both at the individual level and at the national food policy level.
Mr. Zhang Tao said that the safety of GM food was one of the hot issues around the world, but there was no definite conclusion yet. To what extent the middle school students could discuss this issue remained a question for this team to consider.
Mr. Kong Pengfei from Shichang Middle School in Weihai, Shandong Province, reported on their thinking about the topic. After two semesters of practice, his school decided to develop a series of ocean-themed topics with the focus of environmental protection and the regional characteristics of Weihai. In preliminary design, the school identified “Marine Oil and Gas Exploitation”, “Marine Medicine Development”, “Undersea Tunnel”, “Marine Farming” and “desalination of sea water”. He also pointed out three problems, including the lack of experimental equipment, the difficulty of connecting students’ subject knowledge and the lack of experience among new teachers.
Mr. Peng suggested that the school should choose between the topics of “Roads, Bridges and Tunnels” and “Desalination” in that they were more closely related to physics and more in line with the professional level of the team teachers.
Dr. Lin Jing pointed out that Shichang Middle School needed to firstly judge the social impact of the topic, a prerequisite for controversial points; secondly, they needed to consider the feasibility of the topic to ensure that it should meet the cognitive level of the students; finally, the team could advance the topics in a certain order, starting with the local focus topic first.
Mr. Zhang Tao said that the team of Shichang Middle School needed to further think about how to transform the idea into a relatively poor-structured and debatable topic.
Mr. Xue Xiaofeng from Rui’an Middle School Affiliated to Beijing Foreign Studies University shared his school’s new topic “Will You Choose the Technological Eye?”, a further development of the previous series of vision-related topics, involving individuals’ openness to the transformation of their bodies with new technologies, as well as their health and economic awareness. The team proposed to combine the knowledge of physics to let students experience the limitations of the human eye in the early stage of the topic, and to enter a controversial discussion on the application of the technological eye to the human body at a later stage.
Mr. Peng Menghua said that the topic was worthy of recognition for its focus on glasses, but from a technical point of view, the technological eye was a very sophisticated technology that might be quite far away from students, suggesting that the team should consider exploring the topic from the perspective of expanding the function of the eye with a smaller entry point.
Dr. Lin Jing considered that students’ vision protection was a topic worthy of study, but the technological eye itself was far away from students, and it was easy to fall into a pure knowledge expansion rather than to do a socio-scientific issue study. She emphasized that a topic study that focused on knowledge expansion but not on students’ reality was a deviation from the purpose of the socio-scientific issue study project. She hoped that the team could learn from the design experience of other schools and further consider the value of socio-scientific issues.
Ms. An Tongjuan from Wanghaiyuan Middle School in Weihai, Shandong Province, introduced her school’s topic, “Is the Sale of Used Clothes Worth Promoting”. The topic was originated from a problem that students found in their daily life and was closely related to them. Through a preliminary data collection, the team decided to discuss the controversies of the two ways to dispose of clothes: burial & incineration, and refurbishment & sale. However, there were two major problems in the current design of the topic, namely, the lack of controversy and the lack of science.
Mr. Peng Menghua said that the issue of recycling used clothes is a refinement of the issue of waste classification, which was in line with the current characteristics of the time and society. Under the context of improving living conditions, this issue could help students build up the awareness of resource conservation and further discuss the issue of resources in the production process from the perspective of enterprises.
Ms. Yang Jun from Guizhou Normal University stressed that the design of driving questions was the top priority for learning socio-scientific issues, and that all mini-questions and mini-activities were a dismantling and refinement of the driving questions. Specifically, She suggested breaking down all the mini-questions, distinguishing between descriptive questions and questions that explore correlations or cause-and-effect relationships, and mobilizing students to use different methods of investigation and research.
Dr. Lin Jing pointed out that the team needed to first clarify the major differences between used clothing and other garbage, and that from an international perspective, the recycling and re-sale of clothing was now a very common market activity abroad. She added that the topic was more a social one instead of being both social and scientific, which made it difficult to build a broad activity design. For subsequent work, the team needed to further think about how to make the topic more inquiry-oriented.
Ms. Qiu Ziyun from Jiancaoping Experimental School in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, shared the design of her school’s topic “Is Traditional Food Healthy”. The topic was designed to explore the food culture of Shanxi province in the context of the collision between traditional food and modern food. After a semester of practical experience in last semester, the team now shifted their focus from the general Shanxi diet to the specific Taiyuan traditional snack “Tounao (also called Eight Treasures)”, analyzing the reasons why this food was not widely distributed. There were problems in the current design, including unclear controversy, social ambiguity, and heavy burden of knowledge expansion, etc.
Dr. Lin Jing praised the team’s idea of focusing on the topic but pointed out that the current design did not reflect the characteristics of a socio-scientific issue. She suggested that they could start from the perspective of students’ daily balanced diet, incorporate local specialties around healthy eating, and determine where the scientific and controversial aspects of the topic should lie, and finally advance to the point where students fully recognize, experience, and acknowledge the traditional and nutritious specialties of Shanxi.
The meeting was the first topic-focused workshop for the middle school group in this semester. Each of the seven schools shared their topic design, and subject experts offered targeted feedback and suggestions. As the saying goes, “if there is no beginning, there is no end”, the discussion on the topic design of each school laid a solid foundation for the orderly promotion of the socio-scientific issues learning curriculum this semester. It was believed that through the rethinking and reexamination of the issues, the teachers at each school could have a deeper understanding of the development of socio-scientific issues learning and successfully promote the project implementation activities this semester.