Controversial issues in the science classroom

As the partisan divide becomes more toxic to civil discourse, the role of science in that conversation also suffers from collateral damage, becoming suspect at best, and marginalized at worse, in terms of its contribution to resolving issues rooted in science having national and global significance. The authors suggest ameliorating that damage by using a socioscientific issues framework. The framework enables students to explore contentious, ill-defined problems that have conceptual ties to science but cannot be resolved by science alone. With the framework, students are presented with opportunities to wrestle with scientific ideas and oppositional perspectives tempered with human.