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Contributed Talk

Session: : Education: Tools & Technology 1

COS 261-6 - Promoting perspective-taking and open-mindedness about controversial socio-environmental issues in the STEM classroom: A model-based reasoning approach

Thursday, August 10, 2023
11:15 AM – 11:30 AM PDT
Location: E141
Abstract: Controversial socio-environmental issues, including the ecological or social implications of emerging technologies (e.g. resurrecting extinct species and the use of Genetically Modified Crops), presents challenges in the STEM classroom. Students have previously held beliefs or moral convictions about these topics, which can hinder open-minded and rational appraisals of science-based reasoning and evidence. We investigated using mental modeling to help students map out different perspectives on controversial issues. We hypothesized that our intervention would increase perspective taking and other traits associated with constructive dialogue. We also expected our intervention to increase systems thinking, which is an important part of scientific reasoning associated with seeing the causal connections in a complex system. We asked students (907 students at one large public research university and 572 students at a highly selective liberal arts college, 20 classes over two semesters) to read two reasonable yet conflicting perspectives about controversial issues. Then, using a free online model-based concept mapping tool called Mental Modeler (www.mentalmodeler.org), we experimentally tested whether students creating models of the two perspectives they read increases their perspective-taking, open-mindedness, and intellectual humility, increases favorable opinions of the out group, and decreases moral absolutism. We also measured changes in systems thinking. Over the course of a single semester, students in the control condition who did not engage in the mental modeling exercise decreased in their perspective taking, open-mindedness and intellectual humility, while the experimental group did not change. Additionally, students in the experimental condition gained more favorable opinions of individuals holding views different from their own on these topics, while the control group did not change. We found that the control condition decreased in systems thinking while the experimental group stayed the same, although this result was not significant. Our findings indicate that mental modeling of conflicting viewpoints may be an effective teaching tool in science classrooms, if not by promoting traits important for learning controversial topics, at least by preventing their decline. Based on results, which showed the same effect over three diverse topics, we believe results can be applied to other ecological issues, such as conservation and climate change.