Educating Citizens About Risk Through Formal Science Education.* Michaela Zint and R. Ben Peyton, Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824-1222
Although the need to educate citizens about risk pro-actively through formal K-12 education has been identified, this topic has received only limited attention. Decisions involving risk address a variety of interdisciplinary questions including social issues which lend themselves to being incorporated into formal education. Science education in particular can provide a means to prepare future citizens to cope with decisions involving health or environmental risks. National science education reform movements such as Project 2061 and Scope, Sequence and Coordination stress the achievement of goals and the use of instructional techniques consistent with risk education. If science education is to improve society's ability to make decisions involving risks, science teachers must be knowledgeable about the science of risk assessment and equally important, about the social and psychological factors influencing these decisions. Further, teachers must not only be knowledgeable about risk but must be willing and able to incorporate risk education into their curricula. We conducted nine focus groups with 62 grades 6-12 science teachers from Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin and based on the results concluded that a need exists for enhancing science teachers' current risk education efforts. Teachers currently lack information and materials to make them effective risk educators but they are interested and believe that risk education is important. Improvements in science teachers' risk education efforts can be expected if the necessary resources are provided. The focus groups were a component of a larger research project including a mail questionnaire of 2400 grades 6-12 science teachers from Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin [to be conducted Fall 19941. The focus group discussions and efforts to construct a mail questionnaire to validate the focus group results identified a need for defining "risk education." To serve this purpose, we have developed a framework for risk education consisting of measurable knowledge, skill, value (or affect) and behavior outcomes. These risk education outcomes have been validated by a panel of risk and science education researchers and implemented in a mail questionnaire of science educators (grades 6-12). If validated by the questionnaire, this risk education framework could provide guidance for the development and/or evaluation of instructional materials. It may also provide a basis for assessing teacher competencies, as well as for identifying training needs and evaluating training programs.
*Work supported by the Michigan Sea Grant College Program under Grant Number NA89AA-D-SGO83.