Does Topic Matter? Investigating Students’ Interest, Emotions and Learning when Writing Stories About Socioscientific Issues

Abstract This case study of a Year 8 science class in South-East Queensland investigated the affective and cognitive experiences of engaging students in a science-writing project. Building on the work of Tomas, Rigano and Ritchie (2016), students wrote a series of short stories across two school terms about the socio-scientific issues (SSIs) of coal seam gas (CSG) mining and skin grafting. Data were collected using an emotion diary (in which students self-reported their interest and emotions at the end of each lesson), written thinking prompts (designed to elicit students’ evolving understanding of each SSI) and semi-structured, end-of-project student interviews. Three main assertions emerged from analysis of these data. First, students’ self-reported interest was statistically higher in relation to skin grafting compared to CSG. Second, interest and positive emotions reported by students in the skin grafting unit were associated mostly with the topic, while in the CSG mining unit, they were related mostly to pedagogical approaches. Thirdly, students could explain the scientific, social, moral and ethical dimensions of each SSI and an evidence-informed position at the end of both units. These assertions support our thesis that topic does matter when engaging students in writing stories about SSIs. At the same time, while the results of this study support the learning affordances of SSIs, they suggest that the teacher’s pedagogical decisions also matter in keeping students cognitively and affectively engaged when learning about a less interesting or relatable topic.