Henderson, Senka, Tomas Engel, Louisa, and King, Donna (2025) Does Topic Matter? Investigating Students’ Interest, Emotions and Learning when Writing Stories About Socioscientific Issues. Research in Science Education. (In Press)

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Abstract

This case study of a Year 8 science class in South-East Queensland investigated the affective and cognitive experiences of engaging students in a science-writing project. Building on the work of Tomas, Rigano and Ritchie (2016), students wrote a series of short stories across two school terms about the socio-scientific issues (SSIs) of coal seam gas (CSG) mining and skin grafting. Data were collected using an emotion diary (in which students self-reported their interest and emotions at the end of each lesson), written thinking prompts (designed to elicit students’ evolving understanding of each SSI) and semi-structured, end-of-project student interviews. Three main assertions emerged from analysis of these data. First, students’ self-reported interest was statistically higher in relation to skin grafting compared to CSG. Second, interest and positive emotions reported by students in the skin grafting unit were associated mostly with the topic, while in the CSG mining unit, they were related mostly to pedagogical approaches. Thirdly, students could explain the scientific, social, moral and ethical dimensions of each SSI and an evidence-informed position at the end of both units. These assertions support our thesis that topic does matter when engaging students in writing stories about SSIs. At the same time, while the results of this study support the learning affordances of SSIs, they suggest that the teacher’s pedagogical decisions also matter in keeping students cognitively and affectively engaged when learning about a less interesting or relatable topic.

Item ID:	84824
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	1573-1898
Keywords:	Socio-scientific issues; Topic; Emotions; Interest; Stories; Science education
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Copyright Information:	This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Date Deposited:	06 Mar 2025 00:50
FoR Codes:	39 EDUCATION > 3901 Curriculum and pedagogy > 390113 Science, technology and engineering curriculum and pedagogy @ 50% 39 EDUCATION > 3903 Education systems > 390306 Secondary education @ 50%
SEO Codes:	16 EDUCATION AND TRAINING > 1603 Teaching and curriculum > 160302 Pedagogy @ 50% 16 EDUCATION AND TRAINING > 1601 Learner and learning > 160105 Secondary education @ 50%
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