Pre-service Teachers’ Psychological Distance Towards Environmental and Health Socio-Scientific Issues

authored by

Alexander Georg Büssing, Jacqueline Dupont, Susanne Menzel

Abstract

The application of socio-scientific issues (SSI) in classrooms intends to better prepare learners for future challenges, for example in the domains of environmental and health education. But while the real-world connections of these issues have been found to be beneficial for learning and motivation, peoples’ closeness to SSIs is only scarcely understood. This especially concerns (pre-service) teachers, who have high obligations in teaching, for example in guiding discussions and decision-making about the respective issues. As prior studies found less distance to a SSI as positive predictor of teaching motivation, the presented study applied the idea of psychological distance and investigated (1) the differences in psychological distance towards the SSI topics of climate change, returning wolves, and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). Furthermore, we identified (2) antecedents of the psychological distance. Overall, the 189 surveyed pre-service teachers (73.5% female, M

_age = 23.45 years, SD

_age = 3.71) reported the smallest psychological distance towards the topic of climate change and the largest psychological distance towards the topic of PGD, with significant differences between all issues. The factors influencing psychological distance showed a large variation between the issues, as urbanity (returning wolves), self-reported knowledge (climate change), and the implementation of the topic in the own school time (PGD) only affected the psychological distance within specific issues. Only information from the social environment affected the psychological distance for two issues (wolves and PGD). While further conceptual elaboration around the construct of psychological distance is needed, the results illustrate possible causes for pre-service teachers’ psychological distance towards SSIs. This may be useful for professional development and further research about teaching behavior in SSIs.

Organisation(s)

Biology Education Section

External Organisation(s)

Osnabrück University

Type

Contribution to book/anthology

Pages

185-196

No. of pages

Publication date

25.09.2021

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 13 - Climate Action

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74490-8_15 (Access: Closed)