Navigating Wicked Problems through Science Education and Culture: Insights from Bangladesh, Estonia, Turkey, Ukraine

Abstract

In dealing with wicked problems, such as pandemics, war, economic inflation, refugee influx, plus natural disasters such as earthquakes or floods, culture is seen as playing a strong role in determining peoples’ responses. While school science education seeks to promote an awareness of, and even a preparedness toward, dealing with wicked problems, the isolation of school science from culture can result in promoting an image of science, within students, as unaccounted for and unaffected by cultural experiences. In reducing the gap between science education and culture, this study seeks to identify teacher perceptions toward a combined role to be played by both science education and culture in co-addressing wicked problems. In so doing, this study takes into consideration teacher views on four wicked problems – the current war in Ukraine, the recent earthquake in Turkey, a refugee influx into Estonia, and the reoccurring floods in Bangladesh. Through semi-structured interviews with 5 volunteer teachers from each country, the study explores teacher perceptions toward the roles played by culture and science education separately and possible ways to combine these so as to promote a culturally relevant, responsive, and adaptive science education orientation. The significance of this study lies in the multicultural nature of the research, seen as allowing the researchers to gain multicultural perspectives from science teachers with first-hand experience related to wicked problems.