Imagine if, here in America, you could send your kids to public school and know what kind of science education they would experience. Not a series of disconnected science facts and equations, but instead an approach to life that employs scientific thinking as part of a toolkit of skills for navigating the world. And along with these practices, confidence: a sense that they know what it means to think and act as a scientist.
Imagine what it would be like if, as these kids grew up, they were exposed to a world of science that looked a lot like their world. A scientific community peopled by scientists who looked like them and sounded like them, men and women from all sorts of backgrounds. A scientific community composed of the same diversity of people we find in our nation.
This thought exercise is surprisingly difficult. Our current American reality is so far off from what it could be, both in terms of how science is often taught in the classroom and how inaccurately the composition of Science,Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) professionals reflects American diversity. This is not to say that our current reality is all bad. After all, the United States has the most vibrant scientific research sector in the world.1 American research is consistently held up as extraordinarily creative and innovative: an acknowledged power behind the lasting economic strength of the United States.2 And yet, despite years of effort to promote diversity, the science workforce remains overwhelmingly white and male, especially at its highest levels.3 Girls, children of lower socioeconomic status, and children of color either do not pursue or do not complete training in the sciences. At the same time, approximately one-third of Americans reject the theory of evolution, nearly half do not believe that human activities are responsible for climate change, and over sixty percent believe that genetically modified foods are not safe to eat.4 A small but significant minority of parents believe that vaccines are unsafe. In each case, huge numbers of adults are rejecting findings that are overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community.5
This indicates either a substantial, community-wide problem with science education and resulting adult scientific literacy or a significant cultural disconnect, or both. A good deal of critical attention is being paid to potential problems in science education. Both research and investment in STEM education have grown steadily in the past decade. In some cases, advocacy toward STEM investment simply means urging or requiring students to take more science courses in order to improve their science literacy. In the best scenarios, new STEM initiatives focus on experiential, hands-on approaches that introduce students to āthe practice of scienceā. The idea here, supported by substantial research-based evidence, is that if students actually experience what it means to do science, if they have a real encounter with the culture of science, they will be more likely to pursue STEM careers. The mantra: teach more science, and teach it better. In many circles, this is assumed to be enough both to attract more underrepresented groups into the sciences and to improve the science literacy of the population overall.
But what if the culture of science is itself part of the problem? In this book, when I speak of the culture of science, I refer broadly to the interactions between the language of science, conceptions regarding the purpose and nature of science (NOS), and the various media, spaces, and forms through which the scientific community and the general public communicate.6 While classroom science practices do receive a fair amount of critical attention and research, this second potential issue, that science as it is currently presented and practiced may offer significant cultural conflicts for many Americans, receives less attention. The topic is less widely researched, and to a significant degree less understood as an area that could benefit substantially from research. If we work to bring more science into the classroom, to bring students up close and personal with science, what do we do if this is not enough to solve the problem? What if students find science not to be exciting and appealing but unfriendly, intimidating, and foreign to their experience?
The two troubling realitiesāthe American scientific community that lacks diversity and the American population that has a tendency to reject scientific findingsāare not unrelated. Indeed, they both stem in part from the same root cause. The culture of science, as portrayed in the media, and as transmitted in science classes at all levels, is perceived by many Americans as alienating and exclusionary.
If the culture of science is exclusionary, we have a problem, because we must also acknowledge that this culture has power. The ability to engage with STEM offers individuals personal, economic, and political power.7 Engaging with STEM is relevant to peopleās job prospects and financial security, as well as their ability to make informed personal and political decisions. Finding ways to help individual Americans develop a sense of access and power related to the culture of science is important for the enfranchisement of all Americans.8
Before we examine science as a culture, it is worth considering its inherent power as a discipline of thought. In the discipline of science, one acquires both content knowledge and a variety of skills related to questioning, research, and analysis. Possessing knowledge alone imbues one with power, but the practical skills associated with science give people the even more powerful abilities to produce knowledge and answer questions.9 These are both extremely potent tools that individuals can make use of in their daily lives.10 Individuals who are comfortable researching and evaluating information about their medical care, who can understand and interpret the numbers on nutritional labels, and who can read manuals and use tools to do home repair are exercising the power of STEM in their personal lives. These behaviors increase peopleās everyday health and well-being.
Beyond these personal agentic concerns, the power of science as a discipline has, at this time in our nationās history, a great deal of concrete economic value. As automation and off-shoring reduce the quantity of good jobs in the United States, people rely more and more on their educations to find secure employment and financial stability. Many new jobs and opportunities are being created in the STEM fields, which include a diverse spectrum of specialties from healthcare to tech start-ups. Employment in the STEM fields is generally higher paying, more secure, and in many ways more pleasant than other available American jobs, particularly as we move increasingly in the direction of a service economy. Furthermore, STEM-based industries that exploit local resources from agricultural waste to geothermal energy to wind power can provide opportunities to agricultural, manufacturing, and other communities fighting to adapt to changing economic conditions. Given these potent realities, why are relatively few young people, especially from marginalized groups, pursuing scientific careers? Could it be because they simply cannot envision themselves as scientists11?
Here, we begin to examine what impact the culture of science has on the American population. Why do people, most of whom are aware of the personal and economic power related to the practice of science as a discipline, reject science for themselves? To put it more simply, why donāt more students go into STEM, and why do they fail to see themselves as scientists?
This is a more profound question than simply āwhen they look at scientists do they see people that look like them?ā Partly because of how science is presented in many American classrooms, many students do not come to see themselves as potential participants in the scientific enterprise.12 The vast majority of people, regardless of their ethnic background, gender, or economic status, look at science as a discipline and a community, and donāt think of themselves as belonging there. They donāt see a possibility of being involved in scientific discourse. Science, like so many other topics in school, is often perceived by students as simply something to take in, not a process with which to engage. Significantly, the way in which students are expected to internalize science in our culture almost always starts with learning the specialized language of science. In our school system, the first introduction to science as an experience, as a culture, does not come through the practice of science but through the language of science. This language is highly specialized and is often extremely disconnected from studentsā home language practices, both in its vocabulary and discourses practices.13
Before going on to describe some of the problems with the way science is often conveyed in the classroom, and make concrete and practical suggestions for improvement, it is crucial to emphasize that blame for the current situation should not be placed on science teachers. Teachers should not be blamed for conveying the culture of science as they themselves received it, and which they embraced when they took up the challenge of conveying science to the next generation. Nor should the reader get the impression that we are suggesting that there is, somehow, something intentionally or unchangeably wrong with the culture of science. Within the scientific community, the accepted methods and styles of discourse and debate are effective and efficient. What we aim to achieve is heightened awareness of the disconnect between how scientists talk and h...