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Factors Influencing Postsecondary STEM Students’ Views of the Public Communication of an Emergent Technology: a Cross-National Study from Five Universities

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Abstract

Recent efforts in the science education community have highlighted the need to integrate research and theory from science communication research into more general science education scholarship. These synthesized research perspectives are relatively novel but serve an important need to better understand the impacts that the advent of rapidly emerging technologies will have on a new generation of scientists and engineers including their formal communication with engaged citizenry. This cross-national study examined postsecondary science and engineering students’ (n = 254 from five countries: Austria, Finland, France, Israel, and USA) perspectives on the role of science communication in their own formal science and engineering education. More broadly, we examined participants’ understanding of their perceived responsibilities of communicating science and engineering to the general public when an issue contains complex social and ethical implications (SEI). The study is contextualized in the emergent technology of nanotechnology for which SEI are of particular concern and for which the general public often perceives conflicting risks and benefits. Findings indicate that student participants’ hold similar views on the need for their own training in communication as future scientists and engineers. When asked about the role that ethics and risk perception plays in research, development, and public communication of nanotechnology, participants demonstrate similar trajectories of perspectives that are, however, often anchored in very different levels of beginning concern. Results are discussed in the context of considerations for science communication training within formal science education curricula globally.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Middle Tennessee State University, MTSU Box 60, Murfreesboro, TN, 37132, USA

    Grant E. Gardner

  2. Department of Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics Education, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA

    M. Gail Jones

  3. Laboratoire Sciences Techniques Education Formation, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan, Cachan, France

    Virginie Albe

  4. Department of Science Teaching, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

    Ron Blonder

  5. Department of Physics, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Antti Laherto

  6. Department of Educational Psychology, University of Graz, Graz, Austria

    Daniel Macher & Manuela Paechter

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  1. Grant E. Gardner
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  2. M. Gail Jones
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  3. Virginie Albe
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  6. Daniel Macher
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  7. Manuela Paechter
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Correspondence to Grant E. Gardner.

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Gardner, G.E., Jones, M.G., Albe, V. et al. Factors Influencing Postsecondary STEM Students’ Views of the Public Communication of an Emergent Technology: a Cross-National Study from Five Universities. Res Sci Educ 47, 1011–1029 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-016-9537-7

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