Cultural Studies of Science Education

• Narratives of dynamic lands: science education, indigenous knowledge and possible futures

  2015-09-02 03:00:00 AM

  Abstract

  We aim to share some of our work currently focused on understanding and unearthing the multiplicities of ways the denial of culture in relation to science and knowledge construction is embedded in issues of climate change and climate change education. The issues become more troubling when we consider how effects of climate change are manifesting locally in ways that force shifts in Indigenous ways of living while simultaneously nation-states seem to think that continued or increased control of Indigenous practice is warranted. For us, taking the implications of such approaches seriously requires significant consideration of how climate education impacts Indigenous learners and whether learning western climate science is indeed part of making real change important. In our work we have focused on the ways in which settler-colonialism and the resultant racialized hierarchies permeate science education and contribute to an expectation of human entitlement to land and a notion of land permanence.
  Read moreTop

• Response to Marie Paz Morales’ “Influence of culture and language sensitive physics on science attitude achievement”

  2015-09-02 03:00:00 AM

  Abstract

  This response to Marie Paz Morales’ “Influence of culture and language sensitive physics on science attitude achievement” explores the ideas of culturally responsive pedagogy and critical literacy to examine some implications for culturally responsive science instruction implicit in the original manuscript.
  Read moreTop

• Re-envisioning scientific literacy as relational, participatory thinking and doing

  2015-09-02 03:00:00 AM

  Abstract

  This review explores Michelle Hollingsworth Koomen’s “Inclusive science education: Learning from Wizard,” a case study of a middle school student with learning exceptionalities in a mainstream science classroom. The strength of Koomen’s work lies in her elucidation of the ways in which normative science instruction fails to adequately support Wizard’s learning. His classroom experiences position him, if unintentionally, as deficient and incapable, which in turn serves to undermine his ability to fully engage in science or to capitalize on his strengths as a learner in the service of developing disciplinary literacy. I extend this conversation by arguing for a broader view of scientific literacy and the need for a more relational pedagogy in classrooms that supports meaningful and productive engagement in science learning and fosters positive identification with science.
  Read moreTop

• In a different voice: promises and trials of non-English medium journals

  2015-09-02 03:00:00 AM

  Abstract

  Various issues confronting science education publications that cater for non-English speaking audiences are explored. With reference to an English-medium journal that the author co-edits, two main conundrums are discussed: (1) How to serve local school practitioners in concrete ways while fulfilling the institutional goals of academia, and (2) the struggle to promote research from non-English speaking contexts against the hegemony of the English language. It is suggested that valuing difference can create much educational value and thereby allow one’s science teaching to be interrogated, evolve, and maintain its relevancy.
  Read moreTop

• The dilemma of inclusivity in the globalization of academia

  2015-09-01 03:00:00 AM

  Abstract

  This paper extends the conversation started by Mariona Espinet, Mercè Izquierdo, Clara Garcia-Pujol; Ludovic Morge and Isabel Martins and Susana de Souza regarding the diverse issues faced by the internationalisation of science education journals. I use my own experience as an early career researcher coming from an underrepresented culture and language within academia to expand on these issues. I focus on the issues which I have experienced the most: the disconnection between university research and school practice and the struggles with the unspoken power structures. As I delve into my experience, I argue that we are failing to ask the right questions to create a science education community that is inclusive of diverse views and multicultural perspectives. We need to rethink how we can avoid colonisation of school teachers, as Isabel and Susana describe, but also the colonisation of those academics and teachers who are from non-English speaking cultures. I urge us to carry more debates such as the one initiated by these three authors, exposing and debating about the different power structures within science education so that we can progress in empowering all those voices that have been silenced.
  Read moreTop

• Learning from metaphors

  2015-08-28 03:00:00 AM

  Abstract

  Today an increasing number of countries around the world have acquired almost the same metaphorical speech about teaching and learning. These theories grown in the Western world are largely produced within the framework of psychology and individualistic oriented educational philosophy and fits with the ever-expanding financial growth paradigm. This article gives a brief reference to an exchange that in the early 1900’s took place between two different ways to go in American educational philosophy. Then selects John Dewey’s route choice, which took a step away from attempts to create a rationalistic ultimate definition of teaching and learning. Instead, a couple of different metaphors for education are demonstrated that can be used as a basis for pragmatically organizing teaching toward specific purposes and consequences in relation to different cultural traditions.
  Read moreTop

• Sociopolitical development of private school children mobilising for disadvantaged others

  2015-08-07 03:00:00 AM

  Abstract

  A contemporary focus on democratic decision-making has occurred in school science through curricular developments such as socioscientific issues (SSIs) and Science, Technology, Society and Environment (STSE), creates opportunities for inclusion of activist education. However, it appears these components are often taught, if at all, as simply add-on content. Private schools represent a domain of education that has received relatively little attention in research literature regarding sociopolitical activism for addressing SSIs. In this study, we aimed to document the extent to which private school students were able to implement socioscientific activism and to map their socio-political development in the context of a project on child labour. Data collected from student projects and interviews indicate, in many cases, dramatic development of socially critical views and activist orientations that took place over time, and in various steps. A discussion of the factors enabling students’ activist development, such as the school culture, the curriculum, and their teacher, are discussed.
  Read moreTop

• Emotional experiences of preservice science teachers in online learning: the formation, disruption and maintenance of social bonds

  2015-08-06 03:00:00 AM

  Abstract

  The enactment of learning to become a science teacher in online mode is an emotionally charged experience. We attend to the formation, maintenance and disruption of social bonds experienced by online preservice science teachers as they shared their emotional online learning experiences through blogs, or e-motion diaries, in reaction to videos of face-to-face lessons. A multi-theoretic framework drawing on microsociological perspectives of emotion informed our hermeneutic interpretations of students’ first-person accounts reported through an e-motion diary. These accounts were analyzed through our own database of emotion labels constructed from the synthesis of existing literature on emotion across a range of fields of inquiry. Preservice science teachers felt included in the face-to-face group as they watched videos of classroom transactions. The strength of these feelings of social solidarity were dependent on the quality of the video recording. E-motion diaries provided a resource for interactions focused on shared emotional experiences leading to formation of social bonds and the alleviation of feelings of fear, trepidation and anxiety about becoming science teachers. We offer implications to inform practitioners who wish to improve feelings of inclusion amongst their online learners in science education.
  Read moreTop

• Keystone characteristics that support cultural resilience in Karen refugee parents

  2015-08-06 03:00:00 AM

  Abstract

  This participatory action research study used the conceptual framework of social–ecological resilience to explore how Karen (pronounced Ka·rén) refugee parents re-construct cultural resilience in resettlement. The funds of knowledge approach helped to define essential knowledge used by Karen parents within their own community. Framing this study around the concept of resilience situated it within an emancipatory paradigm: refugee parents were actors choosing their own cultural identity and making decisions about what cultural knowledge was important for the science education of their children. Sustainability science with its capacity to absorb indigenous knowledge as legitimate scientific knowledge offered a critical platform for reconciling Karen knowledge with scientific knowledge for science education. Photovoice, participant observation, and semi-structured interviews were used to create visual and written narrative portraits of Karen parents. Narrative analysis revealed that Karen parents had constructed a counter-narrative in Burma and Thailand that enabled them to resist assimilation into the dominant ethnic culture; by contrast, their narrative of life in resettlement in the U.S. focused on the potential for self-determination. Keystone characteristics that contributed to cultural resilience were identified to be the community garden and education as a gateway to a transformed future. Anchored in a cultural tradition of farming, these Karen parents gained perspective and comfort in continuity and the potential of self-determination rooted in the land. Therefore, a cross-cultural learning community for Karen elementary school students that incorporates the Karen language and Karen self-sustaining knowledge of horticulture would be an appropriate venue for building a climate of reciprocity for science learning.
  Read moreTop

• Which values regarding nature and other species are we promoting in the Australian science curriculum?

  2015-08-06 03:00:00 AM

  Abstract

  Through a critical textual analysis of the content and structure of the new Australian science curriculum, in this paper I identify the values it encourages and those that are absent. I investigate whether the Australian science curriculum is likely to promote the attitudes needed to educate generations of children who act more responsibly with other species and the environment. Over the past decades, there has been an increasing awareness of the human impact on the environment and other species. Consistently, there is a growing awareness of the role of education in encouraging children to act in a more ethical, responsible, and caring way. However, it is still unclear as to whether national curricula can (or will aspire to) accomplish this. In Australia, a national science curriculum has been implemented. In this paper I argue that the Australian science curriculum is likely to miss the opportunity to cultivate values of care for nature and other species. Instead, it is likely to reinforce anthropocentric attitudes toward our natural environment. The importance of explicitly promoting values that encourage care and respect for all species and challenges anthropocentric views of other animals and nature are discussed.
  Read moreTop

• The implementation of a social constructivist approach in primary science education in Confucian heritage culture: the case of Vietnam

  2015-08-04 03:00:00 AM

  Abstract

  Social constructivism has been increasingly studied and implemented in science school education. Nevertheless, there is a lack of holistic studies on the implementation of social constructivist approach in primary science education in Confucian heritage culture. This study aims to determine to what extent a social constructivist approach is implemented in primary science education in Confucian heritage culture and to give explanations for the implementation from a cultural perspective. Findings reveal that in Confucian heritage culture a social constructivist approach has so far not implemented well in primary science education. The implementation has been considerably influenced by Confucian heritage culture, which has characteristics divergent from and aligning with those of social constructivism. This study indicates a need for design-based research on social constructivism-based science curriculum for Confucian heritage culture.
  Read moreTop

• Examining teacher-researcher collaboration through the cultural interface

  2015-07-26 03:00:00 AM

  Abstract

  Sharada Gade, in drawing on her long association with a mathematics teacher in Sweden, theorises the complexities of the teacher-researcher collaboration as an expansive learning activity that has developed over time. In this paper, an alternate reading of the teacher-researcher collaboration is offered, one that adds to the analysis provided by Gade, but which draws on the conceptual lens of the cultural interface. We build on Gade’s theorising by further explicating the relational space that emerges when teachers and researchers come together. We argue that it is the emergence of this space that can restrain or facilitate the trajectory of collaboration.
  Read moreTop

• Grappling with wicked problems: exploring photovoice as a decolonizing methodology in science education

  2015-07-26 03:00:00 AM

  Abstract

  In their work with teachers and community members in Kenya, Cassie Quigley and colleagues seek to localize the ‘wicked problems’ (Churchman in Manag Sci 14(4):141–142, 1967) of environmental sustainability through the use of decolonizing methods to challenge top-down approaches to solution-generation in the bountiful yet environmentally compromised Rift Valley. By contextualizing the study of sustainability in this way, science education research can assume the form of community engagement that is ultimately meaningful and maximally impactful to teachers, students, and to the local community. This type of engagement requires re-conceptualizing science knowledge, science practitioners, and science education, as well as moving from a focus on transmission of decontextualized knowledge toward activities embedded in particular places and in matters of local concern. Environmental issues, which at their heart are complex, contentious wicked problems, require a weighing in of multiple perspectives if attempts at resolution are to be sustained by the local community. In concert with Quigley and colleagues’ work with Kenyan teachers and community members exploring notions of environmental sustainability, this article frames the decolonizing methodology of photovoice using Jürgen Habermas’ theory of communicative action to expand on theoretical underpinnings for inclusive deliberation of wicked environmental problems.
  Read moreTop

• What students and researchers in nanoscience and nanotechnology should know about PUS and STS: a look at Fages and Albe’s viewpoint on social issues in nanoscience and nanotechnology Master’s degrees

  2015-06-01 03:00:00 AM

  Abstract

  In this paper, in order to pursue the conversation begun by Fages and Albe (Cult Stud Sci Educ 2014), I highlight three conceptual contributions that could be made by familiarizing nanoscience and nanotechnology researchers and engineers with the work being carried out in science and technology studies and public understanding of science. First, it would allow them to become acquainted with less naive conceptualizations of the capacities of citizens. Second, it would help them to consider the nature and role of scientific expertise from richer, more nuanced and less stereotypical conceptual angles. Third and lastly, it would allow future researchers and engineers to become familiar with different models of interaction between citizens, scientists and decision.
  Read moreTop

• Supporting teachers for race-, class-, and gender-responsive science teaching

  2015-06-01 03:00:00 AM

  Abstract

  In this response to Tang Wee Teo’s article Inside versus outside the science classroom: examining the positionality of two female science teachers at the boundaries of science education, I will extend the conversation around Teo’s finding that the teachers in her study had difficulty translating their “politicized positionalities” into their science teaching by exploring some reasons why this might occur. These reasons are that (1) depending on how positionality is conceived, it could be a limiting mechanism in addition to an empowering one; (2) school and national contexts in which teachers are embedded can frame possibilities for their positionality and science teaching practices; and (3) teachers need support to examine their positionalities, understand how power issues are at work in science, and apply these issues to science teaching. I will elaborate on each of these factors and consider possibilities for helping all science teachers move toward power-sensitive science teaching. I will also propose several practices for incorporating power issues into science curricula.
  Read moreTop

• A cultural historical theoretical perspective of discourse and design in the science classroom

  2015-06-01 03:00:00 AM

  Abstract

  Flavio Azevedo, Peggy Martalock and Tugba Keser have initiated an important conversation in science education as they use sociocultural theory to introduce design based scenarios into the science classroom. This response seeks to expand Azevedo, Martalock and Keser’s article The discourse of design-based science classroom activities by using a specific perspective within a sociocultural framework. Through using a cultural historical (Vygotsky in The history and development of higher mental functions, Plenum Press, New York, 1987) reading of design based activity and discourse in the science classroom, it is proposed that learning should be an integral part of these processes. Therefore, everyday and scientific concepts are explained and expanded in relation to Inventing Graphing and discourse presented in Azevedo, Martalock and Keser’s article. This response reports on the importance of teacher’s being explicit in relation to connecting everyday and scientific concepts alongside design based activity and related science concepts when teaching students. It is argued that explicit teaching of concepts should be instigated prior to analysis of discourse in the science classroom as it is only with experience and understanding these processes that students have the resources to call upon to argue like practicing scientists.
  Read moreTop

• How can teaching make a difference to students’ interest in science? Including Bourdieuan field analysis

  2015-06-01 03:00:00 AM

  Abstract

  In this article we respond to the discussion by Alexandra Schindel Dimick regarding how the taste analysis presented in our feature article can be expanded within a Bourdieuan framework. Here we acknowledge the significance of field theory to introduce wider reflexivity on the kind of taste that is constituted in the science classroom, while we at the same time emphasize the importance of differentiating between how taste is reproduced versus how it is changed through teaching. The contribution of our methodology is mainly to offer the possibility to empirically analyze changes in this taste, and how teaching can make a difference in regard to students’ home backgrounds. However, our last two steps of our taste analysis include asking questions about how the taste developing in the classroom relates more widely in society. Schindel Dimick shows how these two steps can be productively expanded by a wider societal field analysis.
  Read moreTop

• The sociopolitical importance of genetic, phenomenological approaches to science teaching and learning

  2015-06-01 03:00:00 AM

  Abstract

  This article discusses Wolff-Michael Roth’s theoretical framework for a phenomenological, genetic approach to science teaching and learning based on the work of Edmund Husserl. This approach advocates the inclusion of student lifeworlds in science education and underlines the importance of thinking about subjectivity in both science and science education. Roth’s phenomenological approach exposes several important social, political, and cultural questions for science education. Drawing from Edmund Husserl’s philosophy, social theorists, and science education literature, this article discusses some of these important concerns with the goal of highlighting the productive power of a phenomenological approach to science pedagogies.
  Read moreTop

• Questioning collectives and agencies: a commentary on curricular choices

  2015-06-01 03:00:00 AM

  Abstract

  This commentary explores theoretical alternatives for viewing the problem identified by Volny Fages and Virginie Albe in their article entitled Social issues in nanoscience and nanotechnology Master’s degrees: The socio-political stakes of curricular choices. An approach to social research is suggested that would render visible the associations maintaining the states of affairs depicted by Fages and Albe. In their research, Fages and Albe identified conceptions of the relationship between scientific endeavour and social concerns to be at the root of “choices” made by coordinators of Masters programs in nano science and technology in universities selected for their study. Albe and Fages, insiders in the sense that they take responsibility for a particular program within one such course, convey their belief that, “future scientists need to identify, accept and take on board the social responsibilities linked to their own practice of science, and to work collectively for a more democratic division of power regarding socio-technical choices”. However, many of the Master’s programs reviewed in their research were reported as providing limited opportunities for their students to critically engage with social aspects of scientific work. This commentary questions the notion of “choices” used in their research and proposes Actor-Network Theory as a theoretical framework open to the existence of various human and non-human agencies at work when a “choice” is made. The aim of the commentary is to further Fages and Albe’s agenda by calling for understanding and ultimately a reassembling of the state of affairs in a way that would be acceptable to those invested.
  Read moreTop

• Extending methods: using Bourdieu’s field analysis to further investigate taste

  2015-06-01 03:00:00 AM

  Abstract

  In this commentary on Per Anderhag, Per-Olof Wickman and Karim Hamza’s article Signs of taste for science, I consider how their study is situated within the concern for the role of science education in the social and cultural production of inequality. Their article provides a finely detailed methodology for analyzing the constitution of taste within science education classrooms. Nevertheless, because the authors’ socially situated methodology draws upon Bourdieu’s theories, it seems equally important to extend these methods to consider how and why students make particular distinctions within a relational context—a key aspect of Bourdieu’s theory of cultural production. By situating the constitution of taste within Bourdieu’s field analysis, researchers can explore the ways in which students’ tastes and social positionings are established and transformed through time, space, place, and their ability to navigate the field. I describe the process of field analysis in relation to the authors’ paper and suggest that combining the authors’ methods with a field analysis can provide a strong methodological and analytical framework in which theory and methods combine to create a detailed understanding of students’ interest in relation to their context.
  Read moreTop