Equity, Exclusion and Everyday Science Learning

The Experiences of Minoritised Groups

Emily Dawson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351971072
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Equity, Exclusion and Everyday Science Learning explores how some people are excluded from science education and communication. Taking the role of science in society as a starting point, it critically examines the concept of equity in science learning and develops a framework to support inclusive change.

This book presents a theoretically informed, empirically detailed analysis of how people from minoritised groups in the UK experience science and everyday science learning resources in their daily lives. The book draws on two years of ethnographic research carried out in London with five community groups who identified as Asian, Somali, Afro-Caribbean, Latin American and Sierra Leonean. Exploring their experiences of everyday science learning from a sociological perspective, with social justice as a guiding concern, this book opens with a theory of exclusion and closes with a theory of inclusion.

Equity, Exclusion and Everyday Science Learning is not only an essential text for postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers of Science Education, Science Communication and Museum Studies, but for any professional working in museums, science centres and institutional public engagement.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Exploring exclusion

ABDOU: You know when you start thinking of going [out], the science museum or a museum, is the last place that you would even think of, that you would even consider on your list, even if you were doing a list of hundreds of places that you want to go.

EMILY: It wouldn’t even be on the list?

ABDOU: Not on the list!

EMILY: So why is that?

ABDOU: You cannot connect with it. It’s for those people that it matters to […] the museum, or science itself.

What does it mean to feel that science museums and indeed that “science itself” are not for you? And why does that matter for our societies? As Abdou, a middle-aged Sierra Leonean man, argued in the interview extract above, science and science museums were “only for those people that it matters to”. As the research carried out for this book shows, he was not alone in his views. Opportunities to interact with, learn about, speak back to and laugh about science, are marked by structural inequalities that mirror and reproduce social advantages and disadvantages. Understanding how this happens is crucial, as I argue throughout this book, if we are to build more inclusive, more equitable practices within and beyond science communication and education.

This chapter sets out the context of the research discussed in this book and is organised into four sections. The first discusses why it is important to think about the brokering practices between science and society from a sociological perspective, with social justice as a guiding concern. The second section outlines the key terms and concepts used throughout the book. The third presents the details of the research this book is based upon, and the final section maps out each chapter of the book so that readers can pick their way through it as they choose.

Science and society

Opportunities to learn about, engage with, question and critique science are increasingly important in contemporary societies. Science and technology are embedded in people’s lives in ways that are socially, culturally and politically significant. This ranges from issues people grapple with daily, to societal decisions about the legislation of particular technologies, or revelations about scientific scandals and ‘miracle breakthroughs’ in the mass media (Bradu, Orquin, & Thøgersen, 2013; Jasanoff, 2007; Michael, 2006; Nelkin, 1995). Given the degree to which science and technology affect our lives, accessible and equitable opportunities to engage with science are important to equip people with the tools, skills and information to navigate contemporary life or enter science-related professions.

For many people school and the mass media remain the key contexts for encounters with science and scientific information (Ipsos MORI, 2014; Osborne & Dillon, 2007). While schools and the mass media will doubtless continue to represent important sites for science learning and engagement, a world of other opportunities exists alongside them, from activities in science festivals and visits to zoos, to political consultations on scientific issues and citizen science groups (Ballard, Dixon, & Harris, 2017; Bonney et al., 2009; Falk & Dierking, 2012; Lewenstein, 2015; Stilgoe, Lock, & Wilsdon, 2014). Activities within this broad church of science-related public practices have been found to provide participants with opportunities to engage with science in ways that are useful, inspiring and educational (Bell, Lewenstein, Shouse, & Feder, 2009; Phipps, 2010; Stocklmayer, Rennie, & Gilbert, 2010). Questions remain, however, about how accessible, inclusive and equitable such practices are.

Countries like the UK are home to people from around the world and, at the same time, are beset by right-wing politics that seek to render the ‘race’/ethnicity of the dominant ethnic majority invisible, while discriminating against racialised groups (Bhopal, 2018). For instance, the breaking story of the summer of 2018 was the detention and deportation of British-Caribbean people, who were framed as illegal immigrants by the Conservative governments’ Home Office because they were born in the Caribbean. This ‘Windrush Scandal’ saw families separated, homes and jobs lost, but little official response or change to Home Office policy (Gentleman, 2018, p. 1). Stories like this speak to the structural inequalities of contemporary life in the UK.

People in Britain continue to live amidst the legacies of colonialism, with all the material, cultural, political and educational biases that follow from such entrenched inequalities (Eddo-Lodge, 2018; Gilroy, 2002; Hall, 2012; Mirza, 1992). Globalisation has meant, as Doreen Massey (1994) described so beautifully, that the ebbs and flows of ideas, images, emails, people, politics, trade and money circulate in complicated ways that do not necessarily follow the same patterns or result in the same outcomes for the Global North and the Global South. The interplay of ‘race’/ethnicity, class, gender and the other intersecting subjectivities of people’s lives today, as before, warrant careful consideration and, more than that, demand respect, recognition and understanding (Benhabib, 2002; Cho, Crenshaw, & McCall, 2013; Fraser, 2003).

In London, where the research for this book took place, the ripples of colonialism and globalisation continue to play out across the many and varied communities of this city, from its old, venerable institutions to its fleeting, pop-up festivals. Whose cultures and languages are represented in museums and galleries? Who is registered to vote? Whose food is readily available in high-street shops in different neighbourhoods? And, why does any of this matter if you are trying to understand the systems at work behind who watches science documentaries, who buys tickets to go to a science-comedy show, who gets involved in grass-roots campaigns about local pollution and who visits science museums?

This book is a sociological account of what happens when people from racialised groups in the UK encounter science through the various public activities that mediate between people and science. In this book I refer to these activities as everyday science learning practices. To think about how people relate to everyday science learning practices seems impossible to me without thinking at the same time about broader sociological questions. Not least, questions about how certain educational, political and cultural practices reproduce social inequalities along fault lines of ‘race’/ethnicity, class, gender and their intersections. As a result, in this book I build on international research about how people engage with science across the different facets of their lives, concentrating mainly on experiences outside or beyond the formal school system. I also draw on theories of social justice from political philosophy and sociological research to understand what it means for people from minoritised, and in particular in this case racialised groups, to not engage with everyday science learning resources.

Read one way this is a book about everyday science learning practices. I examine how these practices are marked by and reproduce structural inequalities based on ‘race’/ethnicity, class, gender and other facets of people’s intersecting subjectivities. More hopefully, this book also explores how everyday science learning practices might disrupt entrenched patterns of oppression. Read another way this book provides a case study of social reproduction. In this sense, the focus on everyday science learning is simply a context that frames how structural inequalities operate in education, culture and politics. This book therefore contributes not only to research and practice in science education, science communication, public engagement with science and science and technology studies, but also to the sociology of education, cultural studies and social research more broadly.

In this book I argue that the benefits of everyday science learning practices are only partially public. Participants’ exclusion from everyday science learning practices echoed through the different contexts of their daily lives. Difficult experiences with science at school, home and at work echoed their perceptions of everyday science learning as exclusive. These experiences confirmed their expectations, making their non-participation a resilient feature of both their lives and the systems that excluded them.

Being unable to access everyday science learning opportunities can be considered a form of marginalisation and oppression. This is especially the case in societies where engagement with science can be considered key for cultural participation, political voice, education and entertainment, let alone issues of health, employment or well-being (Atwater, 2012; Harding, 2006; Orr & Baram-Tsabari, 2018; Orthia, 2013; Reardon & TallBear, 2012; Young, 1990). I argue that exclusion from everyday science learning is not a question of rebranding and changing perceptions of science or science on television, but instead goes to the core of how everyday science learning is understood and practiced.

Despite appeals for socially inclusive practice at different points in time, certainly across the museum sector, the research carried out for this book suggests many everyday science learning practices remain exclusive resources predominantly used by the more enfranchised groups of society (Association of Science and Technology Centres, 1987; Atkinson, Siddall, & Mason, 2014; Sandell, 1998, 2002; Sandell, Dodd, & Garland-Thomson, 2010). If we hope to develop inclusive, equitable everyday science learning practices that disrupt and transform processes of social reproduction and contribute to dismantling the structural inequalities embedded in our societies, we have to embrace change. To do this we need to better understand how exclusion operates and to respect the experiences and stories of those for whom this system does not work.

The research setting

The research for this book was carried out between the central London boroughs of Southwark (where I lived for the last ten years) and Lambeth. Specifically, my field sites were the neighbourhoods in these two boroughs strung like pearls along the route of the number 68 bus. Travelling south from the river Thames on the 68 bus you are more likely to hear Latin Americans speaking Spanish and Portuguese, Francophone Africans and Polish speakers than English. The 68 bus route took me south from my home to the Asian and Afro-Caribbean community groups and north to the Somali, Sierra Leonean and Latin American communities groups. Beyond the fantastically named neighbourhood of Elephant and Castle, the 68 bus carried me to the two universities where I first studied and later worked while this project unfolded.

Not for nothing is the 68 known locally as the slowest bus in London. The central artery of this study and the 68’s route, the Walworth Road, is a busy, shop-lined street, filled with traffic. As Suzanne Hall (2012) has so meticulously documented, ethnic diversity and class mark Walworth, with Turkish and African supermarkets, Mixed Blessings, the Afro-Caribbean bakery, Figaro’s the barber shop, and a smattering of fried chicken shops, nail parlours and international money senders. The social housing estates around the Walworth road were initially famous in the 1960s for heralding a new dawn for urban housing. But by 1997 these neighbourhoods were famous instead for the poverty experienced by their inhabitants. Inhabitants described as “forgotten people” in Tony Blair’s first speech as Prime Minister, delivered on the Aylesbury Estate, a stone’s throw from the Walworth Road (BBC, 1997; Skeggs, 2004).

Walworth, like the other neighbourhoods participants lived in, is frequently characterised in terms of disadvantage. During this study, for instance, the UK government positioned Walworth as an area of multiple-deprivation. This term was used to explain that the area suffered from a higher crime rate, higher unemployment, worse education infrastructure and more ill health (amongst other things) than other areas of London (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2011). In government terms, these are the features of inner city, multi-ethnic, working-class life.

It was important for this research that research participants lived somewhere with lots of everyday science learning opportunities on their doorstep which they were, nonetheless, not involved with. As such, neighbourhoods like Walworth in central London presented an ideal location for this research. Where someone lives in London reflects their social status through work and housing practices that separate rich from poor, majority from minority ‘racial’/ethnic groups and those with legal status from ‘illegal’ status (Hall, 2012; Sassen, 2001; Sturgis, Brunton-Smith, Kuha, & Jackson, 2013).

While some residents of Southwark and Lambeth are wealthy, many are not. As a diverse, global city London is home to migrants from around the world and those who are not wealthy look for affordable housing in neighbourhoods like Walworth. But housing is hard to come by. During my fieldwork whole council estates¹ in Southwark were demolished to make way for new homes, as the “Now here”, “Nowhere” graffiti on the Heygate Estate testified to prior to its demolition (see Figure 1.1). Eye-wateringly expensive blocks of new flats mushroomed along the 68 bus route, ousting estate residents as gentrification and profits fed into the crisis in affordable housing (Minton, 2017).

Figure 1.1 Now here/Nowhere graffiti ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• Preface and acknowledgements
• Credits
• 1 Introduction: exploring exclusion
• 2 Understanding exclusion
• 3 Mapping participation
• 4 No ‘taste’ for science?
• 5 Feeling excluded
• 6 Being excluded
• 7 Transforming everyday science learning
• 8 Afterword
• Appendix: research methods
• Index