Pedagogical Approaches in Science Education and Students’ Science, Technology, and Society (STS) Orientation: A Multidimensional Quantitative Correlational Inquiry

In the current classrooms, science education focuses on not just acquisition of content knowledge but also learners' construction of relationships among science-technology-society (STS). The pedagogical strategies of IBSE, SSI and CST are hypothesized to reinforce students’ STS orientation by establishing scientific knowledge within authentic social, moral and technological frameworks. A quantitative correlational research design was used to investigate the relationship between pedagogical orientations in science education and NSTS orientation among students. Data for this study were obtained from a researcher-designed pedagogical approaches questionnaire and an amended Science, Technology, and Society orientation instrument developed based on the Views on Science–Technology–Society (VOSTS) framework. Descriptive statistics and the correlation analysis were employed for checking strength and direction of relations between variables. The results revealed that inquiry and SSI-based pedagogical strategies were correlated positively with student STS-oriented instruction, whereas teacher-centered practices had a weak or even insignificant correlation. The results indicate that pedagogical practices in science classrooms have a strong impact on the development of students’ sociotechnical awareness and scientific literacy for citizenship.