Conceptual Change In Socioscientific Issues: Learning About Obesity

Abstract

Conventional school science often portrayed obesity as a self-inflicted problem from a biological perspective and seldom touched upon perspectives from other dimensions at system level such as social, political, marketing, technological, cultural and economic factors that determines individual eating and lifestyle patterns. Obesity centres around a number of socioscientific issues (SSI), e.g., fat tax and direct-to-child marketing. Socioscientific decisions made based on understanding of obesity solely from a biological perspective are likely to be biased against the obese and ultimately fail to overcome this global health challenge. It is important that students could examine obesity beyond a scientific perspective for informed decision making. With reference to the concepts of adherence and prevalence in the conceptual change literature, this paper examined students’ learning of obesity from different perspectives in terms of a shift in adherence and prevalence to different factors contributing to obesity in a 12-week course guided by the SSI teaching & learning model. 114 undergraduate students participated in this study guided by a pre-test/post-test design. Guided essay writing and reflective memo were used to chart students’ learning of obesity in the 12-week course. We found that students became less strongly adhered to causes of obesity at personal level (i.e., high fat diet and overeating) and more submitted to system level perspectives (i.e., marketing of unhealthy foods). The findings suggested that the course was successful in challenging their prior conceptions at personal-level and shifted their understanding to a more sophisticated view of obesity at system level. They also demonstrated the use of a shift in adherence/prevalence from literature of conceptual change in gauging students’ learning of SSI.