Rethinking Scientific Literacy

Wolff-Michael Roth, Angela Calabrese Barton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781135934934
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Rethinking Scientific Literacy presents a new perspective on science learning as a tool for improving communities. By focusing on case studies inside and outside of the classroom, the authors illuminate the relevance of science in students' everyday lives, offering a new vision of scientific literacy that is inextricably linked with social responsibility and community development. The goal if not tote memorization of facts and theories, but a broader competency in scientific thinking and the ability to generate positive change.

1
SCIENCE AS COLLECTIVE PRAXIS, LITERACY, POWER, AND STRUGGLE FOR A BETTER WORLD

Time is out of joint. We cannot avoid remembering September 11, 2001—on that day we were forced to experience the negative results that the work of science educators can bring forth. By means of technology enabled by science, enabled by science education, we watched an act of horror—perpetrated by technology enabled by science, enabled by science education—as the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were destroyed and thousands working there were killed. Watching the news a few weeks later, we were forced to experience the response. Again live, we saw more acts of horror as B-52 bombers, developed by engineers and built by technicians, who had been trained by science educators, destroyed Afghan villages and maimed more innocent people, mostly women and children. There were, of course, other responses in the wake of these events, the redirecting of funding from humanistic programs, increased efforts in the areas of science that feed the technologies of “star wars,” of “exoatmospheric kill vehicles” and other “hit to kill” technologies, and of bomblets of the type that littered Afghanistan and functioned as antipersonnel landmines.

Speaking at the Centennial Nobel Peace Prize Symposium on December 6, 2001, the Chairperson of Amnesty International thought that the government’s response to the horrific human rights abuses of September 11, would be a restriction of civil liberties and human rights, ostensibly to promote security. The means of restricting civil liberties and human rights were again linked to technologies that automatically record and recognize ordinary citizens’¹ faces as they pass airport security, which, once implemented broadly, is a means of tracking frequent travelers in every move they make. Again, scientists and scientifically trained engineers and technicians are involved in designing and developing these technologies. Further development of weapons and “security systems” that destroy human lives and restrict human freedoms are in the making, if we believe the U.S. Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham when he spoke on homeland security:

Our world-class scientific and engineering facilities and creative researchers have helped make our nation more secure for over 50 years. These same resources have been trained on the threats posed by terrorism for some time, and because of this foresight, technologies such as these are in deployment today.¹

And again, scientists were at the forefront of the development as the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory offered its expertise and program experience to the US leaders charged with “strengthening homeland security” and “countering terrorist activities.” That is, the causes, results, perceptions of, and responses to the horrors of terrorism, war, and resistance are deeply about science and technology as well as people, culture, mores, and ethics. Science is deeply enmeshed with all aspects of our world—in both good and bad ways—and events like the attack on the World Trade Center, the subsequent anthrax scare in the United States, the mass killings of livestock in Britain, the fears concerning genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and economic globalization make this apparent. They make imperative an articulation of scientific literacy that is deeper and more critical than that espoused in current science education initiatives.

Every night, science- and scientist-related images flash across the television screen. A drug is pulled off the shelves after thirty years on the market because it has now proven to be cancerous. Geneticists manufacture plants whose seeds are infertile and cannot be used to plant for a crop during subsequent years. Few other than those in the anti-GMO and anti-globalization efforts seem to be concerned and challenge scientists to account for their actions. Time and again, industry, which often uses scientists as their mouthpieces, tells television audiences to leave them with all decisions because, so they say, they know best. Looking at the history of scientific “advances” (nuclear arms, GMOs, drugs), we doubt that scientists individually or as a community know best what is good for society. Unbridled support for development-happy science that lacks parallel development of ethical-moral dimensions will not keep in check the technoscientific advances made. As citizens and science educators we ask ourselves before, during, and after the nightly news, “How and where do we provide opportunities for this and future generations to engage scientists in a dialogue about what they do and what they produce?” “How and where do we currently allow scientific literacy to emerge?” The traditional answer to the question about scientific literacy is to expose children and older students to a faint and distorted image of scientists’ science. This science is claimed to be a pure subject, often taught in special, physically separated rooms, unsullied by common sense, aesthetics, economics, politics or other characteristics of everyday life. Science education often is a form of indoctrination to a particular worldview so that young people do not question the very presuppositions that underlie science. Scientific literacy currently means to question nature in ways such that do not, reflexively, also question science and scientists. The worst is the other part of the current rhetoric about scientific literacy—it is to be for all. All individuals (e.g., Americans), so goes the idealist rhetoric, have to learn and exhibit certain basic facts and skills. Just imagine, every individual taking the same (“scientific”) perspective on GMOs, genetic manipulation of the human genome, or use of drugs (such as those used to dope certain kinds of children, labeled with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder to make them compliant). Conventional approaches to scientific literacy, knowing, and learning are based on an untenable, individualistic (neo-liberal) ideology that does not account for the fundamental relationships between individual and society, knowledge and power, or science, economics, and politics. There is a need to rethink some of our educational goals in terms of society. Scientific literacy cannot be prepackaged in books or delivered to students away from the lived-in world. It must be understood as community practice, undergirded by a collective responsibility and a social consciousness with respect to the issues that threaten our planet. We need to treat scientific literacy as a recognizable and analyzable feature that emerges from the (improvised) choreography of human interaction, which is always a collectively achieved, indeterminate process.

SCIENCE AND LITERACY

There is no doubt that since its introduction, the notion of scientific literacy has played an important role in defining the science education reform agendas. In response to specific events—for Americans, the launching of Sputnik by their arch rivals; for Germans, the outcomes of the PISA test results; for Canadians, the poor showing on the TIMMS tests—efforts are mounted to do something about what are perceived to be national concerns. Usually, the concerns are framed in terms of the lack of knowledge and skills by students of all ages. Even at the time of this writing, we have overheard science educators mocking the responses by Harvard graduates who did not know that the sun was closer to the Earth in winter than in the summer. Reform projects and conceptual change research in science education consistently define science and scientific knowledge in terms of models, theories, concepts, and principles that all students ought to know, understand, and use. The different agendas insist that any reform, if it is to be significant and lasting must be comprehensive and long-term. The rhetoric also insists that reform must center on all children, all grades, and all subjects. Despite this apparent inclusiveness, little has changed over time in the reform rhetoric: the emphasis remains on what each individual needs to know or be able to do independent of the physical and social setting. The knowledge and skills listed are often highly technical and distinct from daily living. Take the following samples from the Benchmarks established by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.²

Neutrons have a mass that is nearly identical to that of protons, but neutrons have no electric charge. Although neutrons have little effect on how an atom interacts with others, they do affect the mass and stability of the nucleus. Isotopes of the same element have the same number of protons (and therefore of electrons) but differ in the number of neutrons. (Physical Setting, Structure of Matter, Grades 9–12)

A living cell is composed of a small number of chemical elements, mainly carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorous, and sulfur. Carbon atoms can easily bond to several other carbon atoms in chains and rings to form large and complex molecules. (Living Environment, Cells, Grades 9–12)

Communication between cells is required to coordinate their diverse activities. Some cells secrete substances that spread only to nearby cells. Others secrete hormones, molecules that are carried in the bloodstream to widely distributed cells that have special receptor sites to which they attach. Along nerve cells, electrical impulses carry information much more rapidly than is possible by diffusion or blood flow. Some drugs mimic or block the molecules involved in transmitting nerve or hormone signals and therefore disturb normal operations of the brain and body. (Human Organism, Basic Functions, Grade 12)

The need for a general scientific and technological literacy is often based on the argument that an effective workforce participation in the twenty-first century requires a certain amount of scientific knowledge. But whereas (science) educators appear to accept it as perfectly normal that we do not learn about the principles underlying the functioning of a small engine (e.g., gas-powered lawn mower, electric mixer) or how to fix it, they insist that we acquire specialized knowledge about the world that is simply inaccessible to our experience. These things are not only inaccessible but also irrelevant to most of our lives. On the other hand, we do frequently encounter a broken small engine, bicycle, or appliance. As a mother living with her two high-school-aged boys in a family homeless shelter once told us:

In my opinion, what does it teach your kids today? Unless they’re gonna become mathematical geniuses or they’re going to go into science, a lot of it doesn’t make sense because they’re not preparing them to go out into the workplace. Even college these days because they’re so centered on learning from books—I understand that it’s important—but they have too many different things to learn that seriously, they’re never gonna use in life. I mean, to me, a good education involves bending over backwards and giving that individual child what they need to succeed in life. Not what maybe ten kids or twenty kids or the top one hundred kids are going to need. What about those other nine hundred kids? It all boils back to the way the school system is set up. They are not offering our kids any alternatives, but going to college or fail. Now that’s not an alternative; that’s an ultimatum.

Despite the rhetoric of scientific literacy for all students, science in schools remains virtually unchanged; students are confronted with basic facts and theories, such as those featured in the previous examples from the Benchmarks. The standards of warrants for science knowledge claims often differ dramatically from the standards characteristic of First Nations people, residing in the authority of the cultural historical developments of oral teachings, or of women, who may approach science with “a feeling for the organism.” That is, the poor, people of color, and women may fail in school science (or be failed by school science) exactly because of the nature of science practices and forms of knowing that are stressed in teaching. Unsurprisingly, minorities (e.g., African Americans, First Nations) and women are often discouraged from studying science because its ways of knowing and its everyday practices privilege white middle-class and male standpoints or from moving into science trajectories (as if scientific literacy had no other outcomes). Students opt out of science or are counseled out of science because success in that field of study means acting white or masculine or because a science trajectory is incommensurate with their life goals or current needs. Science class has become a mechanism for controlling what it means to “know and do science” rather than an empowerment zone where students are valued for their abilities to contribute to, critique, and partake in a just society. Indeed, the pursuit of scientific literacy promoted by recent national agendas does little to address the diverse audiences, many of which have been squeezed out of science in traditional approaches.

Others, often outside the reform movement, maintain that true and lasting scientific literacy is an impossible task for all but a small fraction of the population. Thus, one critic, Norman Levitt, maintains that science is an elitist calling and that “raw intelligence and special skills that far exceed what is to be expected of the average person are required to attain it.”³ Morris Shamos, another critic, thinks that “Few responsible educators really believe that any amount of reform or tinkering with science education will ever elevate all, or even most Americans, to any reasonable state of scientific literacy, however one chooses to define it.”⁴ Basing his estimates on the number of scientists and engineers in society on the one hand and on the results of John Miller’s benchmark studies on the other, Shamos concludes that, at best, 5 percent of American adults are sufficiently literate in science to reach independent judgments on technoscientific societal matters. Shamos concedes that the presence of one or more individuals who are scientifically literate according to his independent judgment criterion should inform and even guide the decision-making process. In this, he does not think of outside experts, who might be considered to follow agendas of some other individual, group, or agency, but they should be considered fellow group members. These experts, even if they are not asserting their knowledge and experience to others in the group, are nevertheless expected to make the real issues salient to all group members and thereby to deflect unfounded rumor and speculation. How this might occur has not been addressed—how can there be both differences in assessment and focus on the real issues?

The other often-neglected issue is that enculturation into a domain, such as science, includes appropriation of the value systems tacitly embodied in the cultural-specific ways of knowing and doing. Thus, if our goal is to allow more people (students and adults alike) to appreciate science in the way that practitioners appreciate it, there might in fact be fewer who engage science in a critical way. Learning to construct and interpret graphs may not be neutral but enculturate (in insidious ways) to the decontextualized scientific worldviews. Thus, we find problematic the request that we ought to strive for the education of an appreciative audience that supports spending on science and technology, even apart from military requirements.

CHANGING THE DRIVERS

In recent years, new ways of thinking science and science education have emerged. In “Changing the Drivers for Science Education,” Peter Fensham argues that school science has been theorized from within science and its vassal, science education.⁵ For too long, science educators and scientists have proposed a model according to which science for all citizens ought to look and sound like scientists’ science. Fensham proposes to rethink what the drivers for science education ought to be. To make science education a viable enterprise in our world, he suggests, it needs to be theorized from a more encompassing position: society. From this position, science, which is but one of many important human endeavors, is given its due place in the overall effort of schooling.

Whereas we agree that it is important to include social issues in the consideration of education for participation in a risk society, we believe that there are limitations to Fensham’s approach because it does not critique schooling and because it rethinks science education from the position of (curriculum) theoreticians. The efforts of rethinking science education from a society perspective leave intact schooling as a mechanism for reproducing an inequitable society. It is not surprising that there are arguments for the need to find ways to deinstitutionalize science education.⁶ There is not only precedence that ordinary (nonscien-tifically trained) people can take a stand on health, environment, or controversial issues where science comes into play, but also that there are ways in which school science can be relevant to community life.⁷ Pertaining to the second limitation, our long-time practical experience teaching science in school and nonschool settings have shown us that rethinking education from outside of praxis runs afoul of the theory-practice gap. It is easy to argue that a new approach won’t work because it is possible in theory but not in practice. To overcome this limitation, careful studies of concrete change efforts are needed because they show pathways along which science education can actually, rather than possibly, change.

Studies in public understanding of science construct an image of the interaction between scientists and non-scientists that is much more complex, dynamic, and interactive than the traditional opposition between “scientific expertise” and ignorance or rejection of scientific knowledge may lead us to believe.⁸ In the everyday world of a community, science emerges not as a coherent, objective, and unproblematic body of knowledge and practices. Rather, science often turns out to be uncertain, contentious, and unable to answer important questions pertaining to the specific (local) issues at hand. In everyday situations, citizen thinking may offer a more comprehensive and effective basis for action than scientific thinking.

CRITIQUE OF ALTERNATIVE REFORM AGENDAS

Science educators pursuing agendas according to which science education should be rethought from a societal perspective do not go far enough because they do not question some of the fundamental problems of schooling that lead to inequities along traditional lines of difference such as race, sex, and social status. Schooling is an activity system in which students are coaxed, urged, coerced, or forced into learning—the traditional discourse about objectives. In this activity system as it currently works, students are asked to engage with discipline-specific tasks, producing artifacts (lab reports, exams) that teachers can mark.⁹ But in every production, an individual also produces and reproduces his or her identity and her or his role in society. Not only do students produce outcomes, evaluated by teachers, but also they are produced as subjects of a certain type—good and poor students, dropouts, or geeks. In these terms, we do not see that recent society-focused reform proposals provide any hope for change. Rather, replacing sc...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• SERIES EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION
• 1. SCIENCE AS COLLECTIVE PRAXIS, LITERACY, POWER, AND STRUGGLE FOR A BETTER WORLD
• 2. SCIENTIFIC LITERACY AS EMERGENT FEATURE OF COLLECTIVE PRAXIS
• 3. SCIENTIFIC LITERACY, HEGEMONY, AND STRUGGLE
• 4. POLITICS, POWER, AND SCIENCE IN INNER-CITY COMMUNITIES
• 5. MARGIN AND CENTER
• 6. CONSTRUCTING SCIENTIFIC DIS/ABILITY
• 7. SCIENCE EDUCATION AS AND FOR CITIZEN SCIENCE
• 8. DANGEROUS TEACHING: USING SCIENCE AS TOOL AND CONTEXT TO WORK FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE
• NOTES