Goals and Competencies for Precollege STS Education: Recommendations Based upon Recent Literature in Environmental Education

Abstract

Initiated by recommendations in the reports of the study groups that examined the status of science education in the United States early in this decade, science-technology-society (STS) education has become accepted as a viable part of the school science curriculum. The social responsibility perspective on STS education that was embodied in those recommendations has become the most widely accepted. Approached from a social responsibility perspective, the goal of STS education is to help students develop the knowledge, skills, and affective qualities to take responsible action on the myriad of STS issues facing humankind. That goal is congruent with the superordinate goal of EE. Given the parallel and the lack of a body of research in STS education, recent EE research on responsible environmental behavior was used to generate a goal structure for STS education that is similar to one prepared for EE by Hungerford et al. in 1980. The STS goal structure is further explicated in a set of fifty-three learner competencies.