Bridging the Partisan Gulf: Employing Compassion to Successfully Resolve Socioscientific Issues

Lecturer

David C. Owens, Georgia Southern UniversityFollow

Media Type

Audio

Date of Lecture

4-3-2020

Description of Lecture

Socioscientific issues (SSI) are issues with ties to science, but that cannot be resolved without also considering non-science aspects of the issue (climate change, bacteria’s development of antibiotic resistance, genetic modification, etc.).To resolve an SSI, citizens must evaluate the affordances of scientific ways of knowing (such as understanding informed by the systematic collection and analysis of data) alongside non-science considerations (e.g., morality, ethics, politics, and the like). Since SSIs are often contentious and involve a diversity of non-science views, they result in polarity on a spectrum of views about the issue, which make SSIs difficult to resolve. Finding viable common ground between scientific and non-scientific views can create cooperation and lead to resolution of SSIs. Dr. Owens considers the potential for compassion to serve as a common ground and proposes a framework for considering science and non-science ways of knowing to understand and resolve contemporary, contentious SSI.

Comments

David Owens is an Asst. Professor of Science Education, Middle Grades & Secondary Education in the College of Education, Georgia Southern University.

This lecture was hosted and broadcast by community radio station WRUU Savannah 107.5 (wruu.org) during Spring 2021.

Recommended Citation

Owens, David C., "Bridging the Partisan Gulf: Employing Compassion to Successfully Resolve Socioscientific Issues" (2020). Robert Ingram Strozier Lecture Series (1993-present). 43.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/strozier-lecture-series/43

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.