Optimization as a reasoning strategy for dealing with socioscientific decision‐making situations

This paper reports on an attempt to help 12‐year‐old students develop a specific optimization strategy for selecting among possible solutions in socioscientific decision‐making situations. We have developed teaching and learning materials for elaborating this strategy, and we have implemented them in two intact classes ( N = 48). Prior to and after the implementation, which lasted for nine 80‐minute sessions, we collected data through a number of open‐ended tasks that asked students either to address certain decision‐making situations or to evaluate given decisions. Twenty students (42%) also participated in follow‐up interviews. Data analysis revealed that this type of intervention may lead to an improvement in students' decision‐making reasoning strategies, starting from an early stage. Specifically, after the implementation (i) most students spontaneously selected to apply the targeted optimization strategy and provided appropriate justifications for their decisions, (ii) there was a substantial reduction in the frequency of responses that either relied on noncompensatory approaches or synthesized the available information in a nonvalid manner, and (iii) there was an improvement in students' ability to elaborate reasoning flaws in given decision‐making approaches. In addition, the findings provide insights into certain challenges and confounding factors involved in designing learning materials for promoting such reasoning strategies. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 96:600–630, 2012