Mirjamaija Mikkilä: How to support students to solve wicked problems in post-truth era? – From conceptual change to science literacy?
Our current problems like COVID-19, climate science and loss of biodiversity have already shown us that understanding of science phenomena is essential in everyday decision making. For example the Covid-19 pandemics made visible how important it is to have conceptual understanding of basic science phenomena and how difficult it is to apply this understanding on behavioural level. A further challenge is that learning often takes place in Internet, and we have to use and evaluate multiple texts as sources. Hence, to build a coherent understanding often presupposes conceptual change and multiple text comprehension. In this talk I will present two research projects FINSCI and SITE and reflect on current pedagogical challenges and possible solutions. Hence, an important direction to broaden up the conceptual change research is to connect it to the science literacy research tradition. What is the role of parents, school, teachers, and teacher education to support students in post-truth aera to solve wicked problems?