Month: June 2024
Engaging with Conspiracy Believers
Abstract
Conspiracy theories abound in social and political discourse, believed by millions of people around the world. In this article, we highlight when it is important to engage with people who believe in conspiracy theories and review recent literature highlighting how best to do so. We first summarise research on the potentially damaging consequences of conspiracy beliefs for individuals, including consequences related to psychopathology. We also focus on the consequences for groups, and societies, and the importance of understanding and addressing conspiracy beliefs. We then review recent literature on how to engage with people who believe in conspiracy theories, specifically with the goal to reduce susceptibility to conspiracy theories and other types of misinformation. We focus on interpersonal strategies to communicate with individuals who believe in conspiracy theories, and large-scale strategies designed to reduce conspiracy beliefs within broader communities.
Students’ Holistic Reading of Socio-Scientific Texts on Climate Change in a ChatGPT Scenario
Abstract
ChatGPT becomes a prominent tool for students’ learning of science when students read its scientific texts. Students read to learn about climate change misinformation using ChatGPT, while they develop critical awareness of the content, linguistic features as well as nature of AI and science to comprehend these texts. In this exploratory study, we investigated students’ reading performance in comprehending two ChatGPT-generated socio-scientific texts, with one focusing on cognitive-epistemic aspects of climate science and another one focusing on social-institutional aspects of climate science. We theorized such reading of ChatGPT-generated outputs as encompassing the content-interpretation, genre-reasoning and epistemic-evaluation domains. Combining Rasch partial-credit model and qualitative analysis, we explored and investigated how a total of 117 junior secondary students (grades 8 to 9) read such texts. Moreover, we also examined how 55 students’ holistic reading of socio-scientific texts on climate change in a ChatGPT scenario changes after a reading-science intervention. Our findings indicate that the content-interpretation was the easiest while the epistemic-evaluation domains were the most difficult. Interestingly, after the reading-science intervention, many students developed their tentative view on nature of science when they evaluated ChatGPT’s claims; while a small increase in number of students discussed reliability and non-epistemic nature of AI when they evaluated ChatGPT’s claims in relation to climate change. The findings also drive a pedagogical model that improves students’ holistic reading of socio-scientific texts generated by ChatGPT.
The Influence of Culture on the Cause, Diagnosis and Treatment of Serious Mental Illness (Ufufunyana): Perspectives of Traditional Health Practitioners in the Harry Gwala District, KwaZulu-Natal
Abstract
Cultural beliefs influence the perceived cause, methods of diagnosis and treatment of mental illnesses. A qualitative study was conducted among traditional health practitioners (THPs) in the Harry Gwala District Municipality to further explore this influence. Purposive sampling assisted in the recruitment of 31 participants (9 males and 22 females). The four key themes this study investigated in relation to mental illness included its causes, methods of diagnosis, common symptoms observed and treatment approaches used by THPs, and the system of patient management. Culturally, mental illness was reported to be caused by witchcraft and an ancestral calling in this study. Mental illness was predominantly diagnosed by spiritual intervention which included divination through consultation with the ancestors, familial background, burning of incense which can also be part of communicating with the ancestors and through examining the patient. The common symptoms included aggression, hallucination and unresponsiveness. Prevalent modes of treatment included the use of a medicinal concoction and performing cultural rituals where ancestors and other spirits were assumed influential. The duration of the treatment process was dependent on guidance from the ancestors. Most causal aspects of mental illness from diagnosis to treatment seemed to be influenced by cultural beliefs and ancestors.
Curiosity Opens Relationships of the World and with Others: Narratives from Doing Teaching and Learning Through Curiosity
Abstract
What potentials does curiosity bear for education? Some characterizations portray curiosity as self-motivated search for answers, a drive conformable with conventional education’s imperative for correct answers. For participants in this study, curiosity engages them with their relationships to the world. This article examines curiosity from along my developing in learning and teaching. While school settings limited or excluded curiosity, both for me as a student and as a teacher, it relates how I encountered the value of curiosity in examples of my father, mentors, and other experiences. Beginning with a gradual and uncertain process, I transitioned from being an educator bound by conventional expectations, to a teacher-researcher creating environments where learners’ expressions and acts of curiosity constitute the educational work that I actively support and seek to extend. Curiosity in the classroom generates trajectories and engagements that differ from conventional instruction. This article demonstrates and researches the educational work of curiosity, through contextual narratives from my teaching as a beginner at accommodating students’ curiosity, and from my recent teaching, where students and I more fully commit to the relational and educational possibilities of encouraging curiosity. In facilitating these experiences, I apply the research pedagogy of Eleanor Duckworth, ‘critical exploration in the classroom’. In narratives from my teaching, curiosity propels exploring relationships among: floating and sinking; trees, leaves and acorns; dye in water; maple sap sweetness; bubbles in water; and permutations of objects. Provocations from historical works include: Leonardo’s drawings; Hooke’s and Ramón y Cajal’s microscopy; Keats’ “negative capability”; Dewey’s reflections on interdependency among children and adults; and children’s creations in Reggio Emilia preschools. As experience builds through curiosity, relations deepen in ways simultaneously unadulterated—exploring unconstrained—and unchildlike—sustaining commitment. Participants characterize our process as having “No End Goal” imposed from outside themselves, unlike formal instruction that suppresses personal curiosity in favor of pre-ordained goals. The natural world, opened by curiosity, embodies ever-emerging relationships that accommodate concurrent widening and deepening of learners’ involvement and realizations. Learning experiences happening through relationships are infused with emotion, aesthetic qualities, and social connections and concerns.
(Re)considering Nature of Science Education in the Face of Socio-scientific Challenges and Injustices
Abstract
Throughout the past decades, challenges of socio-scientific nature such as the COVID-19 pandemic, climate degradation and scientific racism have brought many relevant and pressing questions to the fore of the science education field, prompting science educators into (re)thinking the purposes and roles of science education within a landscape where the links between science and socio-political challenges, injustices, citizenship and democracy have become increasingly complex. In this theoretical paper, I seek to examine what Critical Pedagogies and Decolonial Studies can bring to science education in the face of these challenges and injustices of socio-scientific nature, with a focus on the area of Nature of Science (NOS). In particular, drawing on scholarship from across these fields and on some illustrative examples from common science education topics, I seek to propose ways in which an approach to NOS grounded on a critical-decolonial perspective may be used to support the learning of school students and science teachers’ own professional learning around science’s entanglements with social justice and socio-political issues.