Science & Technology Education Library: The Role of Moral Reasoning on Socioscientific Issues and Discourse in Science Education (Volume 19)

Norman G. Lederman I remember moving into my graduate student office at Syracuse University in 1979 as if it was yesterday. Directly across the hall was another graduate student office with the door closed. On the door was an index card with the following quote: Nothing happened in 1945 except that we changed the scale of our indifference to man; and conscience, in revenge, for an instant became immediate to us. Before the immediacy fades in a sequence of televised atomic tests, let us acknowledge our subject for what it is: civilization face to face with its own implications. The implications are both the industrial slum which Nagasaki was before it was bombed, and the ashy desolation which the bomb made of the slum. And 1 civilization asks of both ruins, ‘Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t Ma Baby?’ The quotation focused around an individual’s viewing and reaction to the destruction in Nagasaki following the dropping of a nuclear bomb. The quote was from Bronowski’s Science and Human Values and it was pasted to the door of Dana Zeidler’s office. What goes around comes around in educational circles and I was unavoidably reminded of the quotation on Dana’s door when reading this volume in preparation for the writing of this Foreword. I am not simply reminiscing about my first day as a PhD student, but rather I think the Bronowski quote cuts to the core of the text you are about to read.

This book is the first in the field to directly address moral reasoning and socioscientific discourse. It provides a theoretical framework to rethink what a "functional view" of scientific literacy entails by examining how nature of science issues, classroom discourse issues, cultural issues, and science-technology-society-environment case-based issues contribute to developing habits of mind about socioscientific content. The philosophical, psychological and pedagogical considerations underpinning the role of moral reasoning and the status of socioscientific issues in science education have been succinctly expressed and elucidated in this book. Science teachers, teacher educators, researchers, curriculum designers, politicians, and organizations interested in educational and political reform should find this volume very relevant and important for their missions. The extensive coverage of topics makes this book excellent for both theoretical and practical purposes.