(Re)framing Socioscientific Issues in Canadian Science Education: A Relational, Indigenous, and Posthumanism Approach

This paper explores how socioscientific issues (SSI) can be enacted within science education through relational, posthumanism, and Indigenous epistemologies. We argue that conventional Western science (WS) education often presents knowledge as abstract, objective, and disconnected from social, cultural, and ecological contexts which reinforces human exceptionalism and superiority. Drawing on SSI, posthumanism, and Indigenous knowledges-sciences (IK-S), we foreground relationality, reciprocity, and ethical responsibility and position learners as engaged participants in complex webs of networks rather than isolated beings. We highlight relationality to illustrate how these perspectives inform pedagogical possibilities. Through a Two-Eyed Seeing approach, we outline examples that integrate SSI, posthumanism, and IK-S with relational, land-based, and ethical responsibility. Finally, we argue that teacher education must provide dedicated spaces for pre- and in-service training to support the enactment of innovative, embodied, and relational SSI pedagogy. Ultimately, we advocate for a transformative model of science education that cultivates learners’ empathy, humility, and ethical engagement in our common world. Keywords: socioscientific issues (SSI), relationality, posthumanism, Indigenous knowledges-sciences (IK-S), science education