Dr. Troy Sadler will give a talk during the seminar on Modeling and systems thinking for socio-scientific issues teaching and learning. 

Sadler is a professor of science education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Education and serves at the Thomas James Distinguished Professor of Experiential Learning. Sadler’s research focuses on how students negotiate complex socio-scientific issues and how these issues may be used as contexts for science learning. He is interested in how issues-based learning experiences can support student learning of science and development of practices essential for full participation in modern societies. He has also explored ways in which innovative technologies including virtual environments and gaming can support student learning. Sadler’s work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Institute of Education Sciences, the US Department of Education, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute as well as local foundations and state agencies. He has served in elected and appointed leadership roles in the world’s leading science education associations including NARST: A Worldwide Organization for Improving Science Teaching and Learning Through Research and the National Science Teachers Association. He is Co-Editor of the Journal of Research in Science Teaching, one of the world’s leading journals for science education research. Prior to his work at UNC, Sadler was a science education faculty member at the University of Florida and the University of Missouri and served as the director of a STEM education research center.

Socio-scientific Issues (SSI) are societal challenges embedded in complex systems and connected to science ideas and processes. Our team has been exploring how student engagement in scientific modeling can support their learning of SSI-related science and decision-making in response to complex issues. Constructing, critiquing, and using system diagrams is one form of modeling that students can use to engage with SSI. Our research explores student ideas about system modeling, how students represent complexity in these models, and how these tools can be leveraged as a culturally responsive strategy for SSI education.