Call for Article Proposals: Socio-scientific Issues in Education: A Canadian Perspective

2025-02-28

Special Issue for In Education Summer 2026: Call for Article Proposals

Socio-scientific Issues in Education: A Canadian Perspective

Guest Editors: Dr. Latika Raisinghani, Dr. Lilian Pozzer, & Dr. Ellen Watson

We invite manuscripts from Canadian scholars that may focus on various socio-scientific issues (SSI) to inform social and ecological justice in education. As Bencze et al. (2020) mention, SSI is a progressive socio-cultural movement that shares roots with STSE i.e. Science Technology Society and Environment (Pedretti et al., 2008) and SAQ i.e. Socially Acute Questions (Simonneaux & Simonneaux, 2012) movements in science education. Accordingly, the SSI framework braids moral aspects involving social and environmental responsibility with the activity of education in science. This braiding promotes scientific literacy by inviting students to critically evaluate the merits, demerits, and implications of scientific and technological advancements (Zeidler, 2014). SSI may focus on creating awareness about and addressing ethical, political, economical, technological dilemmas that arise due to complex STSE interrelationships (Viehmann et al., 2024). Canadian education has a long history of including SSI into its classrooms (Pedretti & Nazir, 2011), but recent studies (Field et al., 2023; Schatz, 2021) indicate that Canadian curriculum documents, and consequently Canadian education, may need further thinking on the integration of SSI. This is particularly evident when considering the rise in misinformation related to SSI such as climate change, artificial intelligence, and community health measures such as post-pandemic debates around vaccine efficacy and long-COVID. The increasing mistrust in expertise and experts is leading to increasingly diverse partisan polarization across the education sphere. Hence, this issue seeks to address the question, “How can we prepare Canadian students for a world where SSI are so strongly polarizing?”

 

We invite contributions that address one or more of these questions:

  1. Whose knowledge and voices are valued and promoted in contemporary educational spaces when discussing SSI?
  2. How can we engage in learning through/with/about SSI without inciting hate speech, ensuring the well-being of individuals and the community, and inviting diverse perspectives with affirmation, solidarity, and critique?
  3. How might we prepare students to critically analyze SSI and to become capable in responsible decision making? 
  4. What challenges are inherent in implementation and enactment of SSI in teaching practice? How might we prepare teachers for these challenges?
  5. In what ways may we invite holistic education that addresses SSI and cultivates relational connectedness with the human and more than human world?

We are also open to submissions that may engage with addressing SSI in education beyond these questions.

Submission Guidelines

Proposals should be up to 1000 words, excluding references, following APA 7 style guidelines for formatting and references.

As part of your contributions to this issue, authors of accepted proposals will be expected to review at least one other submission.

Proposals must be submitted to Dr. Ellen Watson at watsone@brandonu.ca by 4:30 p.m. CDT June 2, 2025.

Final manuscripts are expected to be up to 6500 words in length, excluding references, tables, and appendices.

 

Anticipated Timeline

Proposal Submission: June 2, 2025

Proposal Acceptance Notification: July 2, 2025

Manuscript Submission: November 3, 2025

Peer Review of Manuscript Due: February 2, 2026

Final Manuscript Submission: May 2, 2026

 

References

Bencze, L., Pouliot, C., Pedretti, E., Simonneaux, L., Simonneaux, J., & Zeidler, D. (2020). SAQ, SSI and STSE education: Defending and extending “science-in-context.” Cultural Studies of Science Education, 15(3), 825–851. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-019-09962-7

Field, E., Spiropoulos, G., Nguyen, A. T., & Grewal, R. K. (2023). Climate change education within Canada’s regional curricula: A systematic review of gaps and opportunities. Canadian Journal of Educational Administration and Policy, 202(2023), 155–184. https://doi.org/10.7202/1099989ar

Pedretti, E. G., Bencze, L., Hewitt, J., Romkey, L., & Jivraj, A. (2008). Promoting issues-based STSE perspectives in science teacher education: Problems of identity and ideology. Science and Education, 17(8–9), 941–960. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-006-9060-8.

Pedretti, E., & Nazir, J. (2011). Currents in STSE education: Mapping a complex field, 40 years on. Science Education, 95(4), 601–626. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.20435

Schatz, K. (2021) Where we stand: The integration of climate change education in Canadian schools. British Columbia Council for International Cooperation. https://www.bccic.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/FINAL-Climate-Change-Education-in-Canada.pdf

Simonneaux, J., & Simonneaux, L. (2012). Educational configurations for teaching environmental socio-scientific issues within the perspective of sustainability. Research in Science Education, 42, 75–94. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-011-9257-y.

Viehmann, C., Fernández Cárdenas, J. M., & Reynaga Peña, C. G. (2024). The use of socioscientific issues in science lessons: A scoping review. Sustainability, 16(14), 5827, pp. 1-29. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16145827

Zeidler, D. L. (2014). Socioscientific issues as a curriculum emphasis: Theory, research and practice.  In N. G. Lederman & S. K. Abell (Eds.), Handbook of research on science education (Vol. II, pp. 697–726)., Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203097267.ch34