Developing Meta-Scientific Literacy skills (MSL) through socioscientific issues requires more than subject knowledge. Because of the complex and controversial nature of the socioscientific issues, along with the social dimensions of those issues, teachers need a broad range of transversal competences and attitudes. To address those is also the aim of the SciLMi framework. These transversal competences and attitudes can support you as a teacher to guide inquiry, facilitate dialogue, manage uncertainty and support democratic participation in the classroom. Acquiring transversal competences is relevant across subjects and educational contexts and therefore extends beyond discipline-specific teaching expertise. This is one of the major goals of the SciLMi project and the SciLMi framework - to provide you with the tools to work outside your disciplines. The educators’ dimension presents transversal competences, together with teaching methods and practices, that help you support your students in developing Meta-Scientific Literacies.
\nThe first part of the educators’ dimension is an ‘Overview’ table with examples of teaching methods and practices that can be used to design or implement a SciLMi lesson. The second part ‘Before the Implementation’ includes information that is useful before going into the classroom (i.e. understand the SciLMi learners’ dimension from the perspective of a learner, to understand the aspects of socioscientific issues as the context for instruction, and appreciate the cross-disciplinary nature of SciLMi). The third part, ‘During the Implementation’ presents information on what to consider in the immediate run-up to a SciLMi lesson and during the teaching, including practical information on how to promote attitudes of openness and respect in the classroom, as well as examples of teaching methods and practices you may want to try out to promote the MSL and the SciLMi Framework.
\nIn order to foster MSL, you as a teacher yourself may need to foster your own transversal competences. Transversal competences are broad competences that can be applied across different subjects and can also be implemented in real life situations - and this is what the SciLMi project and the SciLMi framework is aiming for - to provide you with a bigger picture about what future competences and skills might be.
\nTransversal competences include combinations of knowledge, skills, attitudes, values and dispositions. Specifically, in educational contexts transversal competences often include critical thinking, communication, collaboration, problem-solving, openness to multiple perspectives and responsible participation in society. Within the SciLMi framework, and specifically within the learners’ dimension, acquiring these transversal competences yourself can enable you to become a role model for tackling socioscientific issues competently and to support your students in evaluating information critically, engaging with diverse viewpoints, reflecting in ethical ways and communicating, using socioscientific issues as the context. Within the SciLMi approach transversal competences and attitudes are important because you as a teacher are not expected to focus on teaching the content only, but you are also expected to shape learning environments in which students learn how to engage critically and constructively with complex issues.
\nYou are therefore expected to act as facilitators of dialogue in your classrooms, as moderators of uncertainty, and as role models for democratic participation. For example, in order to ask students to evaluate information critically, you need to demonstrate intellectual openness, acknowledge uncertainty, consider alternative perspectives, and seek reliable evidence. In a similar way, supporting respectful classroom dialogue on controversial socioscientific issues requires attitudes on your behalf such as empathy, tolerance and openness, along with competences in facilitating these discussions. These attitudes cannot be “taught” through direct instruction; you can, however, model them by putting them into practice yourself. And they may also be developed indirectly by establishing a classroom culture that embodies these attitudes. The educators’ dimension therefore does not only focus on instructional methods and strategies but also on transversal professional competences and attitudes that will support you while implementing the SciLMi framework in a more holistic way.
\nIn the following sections you can find practical information and advice on how to create a classroom culture that promotes transversal skills and attitudes related to MSL and the learners’ dimension of SciLMi.
","UPDATEDAT":"2026-10-27T22:04:24.739Z","ID":"46a4262b-138c-4943-b589-55ad5a94840b","TITLE":"Teacher Competences"}