sociocultural influences on science education: innovation for contemporary times

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Sociocultural Influences on Science Education: Innovation for Contemporary Times LYN CARTER Trescowthick School of Education, Australian Catholic University, 115 Victoria Parade, Locked Bag 4115 DC, Fiztroy, Victoria 3065, Australia Received 26 September 2006; revised 21 May 2007; accepted 22 May 2007 DOI 10.1002/sce.20228 Published online 9 July 2007 inWiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). ABSTRACT: This paper reviews the significant sociocultural literatures on science stud- ies, cultural diversity, and sustainability science to develop theoretical perspectives for science education more suitable to the challenges of contemporaneity. While the influences of science studies and cultural diversity are not uncommon within the science education literature on innovation, the difference here is the inclusion of the newer field of sustain- ability science. These threads are drawn are together to help formulate a view of science education that contributes to the ongoing discussion of what it could be in the 21st century. Finally, a science unit in a preservice teacher education course is then described, which aims to engage, inform, and empower beginning teachers in ways that tackle the challenges of contemporaneity. C 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 92:165 – 181, 2008 INTRODUCTION: RECENT SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVES IN SCIENCE EDUCATION Recent decades have seen an increase in sociocultural perspectives within science edu- cation that are reflective of the cultural turn in intellectual theory more generally (Lemke, 2001). These critical, historical, political, and socioecological views, together with post- modern and feminist thinking interested in access to scientific knowledge, education, and power, are part of enlightened science education discourse (Wong, 2001). Three areas within the sociocultural are of particular interest here. First, the recent critiques of science generated from those subfields collectively known as science studies have become increas- ingly influential in the science education literature (see, e.g., Cunningham & Helms, 1998; Hodson, 1999; Kelly & Chen, 1999; Weinstein, 1998; and the special journal editions: Educational Policy, edited by Bromley & Shutkin, 1998 and Research in Science Educa- tion, edited by Roth, 1998). Science studies have challenged Western science’s traditional claims to be value free, objective, and universal truth, revealing instead the sociocultural Correspondence to: Lyn Carter; e-mail: [email protected] C 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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Sociocultural Influences onScience Education: Innovationfor Contemporary Times

LYN CARTERTrescowthick School of Education, Australian Catholic University, 115 Victoria Parade,Locked Bag 4115 DC, Fiztroy, Victoria 3065, Australia

Received 26 September 2006; revised 21 May 2007; accepted 22 May 2007

DOI 10.1002/sce.20228Published online 9 July 2007 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com).

ABSTRACT: This paper reviews the significant sociocultural literatures on science stud-ies, cultural diversity, and sustainability science to develop theoretical perspectives forscience education more suitable to the challenges of contemporaneity. While the influencesof science studies and cultural diversity are not uncommon within the science educationliterature on innovation, the difference here is the inclusion of the newer field of sustain-ability science. These threads are drawn are together to help formulate a view of scienceeducation that contributes to the ongoing discussion of what it could be in the 21st century.Finally, a science unit in a preservice teacher education course is then described, whichaims to engage, inform, and empower beginning teachers in ways that tackle the challengesof contemporaneity. C© 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 92:165 – 181, 2008

INTRODUCTION: RECENT SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVESIN SCIENCE EDUCATION

Recent decades have seen an increase in sociocultural perspectives within science edu-cation that are reflective of the cultural turn in intellectual theory more generally (Lemke,2001). These critical, historical, political, and socioecological views, together with post-modern and feminist thinking interested in access to scientific knowledge, education, andpower, are part of enlightened science education discourse (Wong, 2001). Three areaswithin the sociocultural are of particular interest here. First, the recent critiques of sciencegenerated from those subfields collectively known as science studies have become increas-ingly influential in the science education literature (see, e.g., Cunningham & Helms, 1998;Hodson, 1999; Kelly & Chen, 1999; Weinstein, 1998; and the special journal editions:Educational Policy, edited by Bromley & Shutkin, 1998 and Research in Science Educa-tion, edited by Roth, 1998). Science studies have challenged Western science’s traditionalclaims to be value free, objective, and universal truth, revealing instead the sociocultural

Correspondence to: Lyn Carter; e-mail: [email protected]

C© 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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construction of scientific knowledge, and its coexistence with other various and multiplelocal/indigenous versions of science.

Second, considerable attention has been focused on crossculturalism, and the encounterbetween the normative culture of science education and cultural and linguistic diversity(Lemke, 2001). This is evident from the increasing frequency of studies (e.g., Jegede &Aikenhead, 1999; Krugly-Smolska, 1999; Lee, 1999, 2003; Ogawa, 1996), as well as in thepublication of three special journal editions. These are a 2001 Science Education editionintroduced by Aikenhead and Lewis (2001) on multiculturalism and science education,one issue of the Journal of Research in Science Teaching (JRST) on language and culturaldiversity introduced by Lee (2001), and several JRST issues edited by Calabrese Barton andTobin (2001, 2002), devoted to science education in urban settings where linguistically andculturally diverse students concentrate. While not explicitly acknowledged in the literature,science education’s increasing interest in diversity is a consequence of the complex trans-formations of our rapidly globalizing world (see Carter, 2005a). Globalization has meantthat at the local level, the world’s peoples rub more closely together ensuring that diversity,plurality, hybridity, and dislocation have become the leitmotifs of the global age.

Finally, the impact of social life on natural planetary systems and the potential forecological crisis has become the focus of some science education literature (e.g., Andersson& Wallin, 2000; Gough, 2003; Hogan, 2002; Manzanal, Barreiro, & Jimenez, 1999; Snively& Corsiglia, 2001). The high levels of resource consumption and waste production withinthe global technoscientific progress paradigm, consequent to what Hamilton (2003) calls“growth fetishism,” means that humans have fundamentally altered the conditions for life.Limits to growth scenarios have emerged highlighting the complex question of how to effectthe transition toward a sustainable future (Brown, 2004; Meadows, Randers, & Meadows,2004). Sustainability science is a new field of transdisciplinary science that investigates thecomplex nature–society interactions, so as fundamental human needs can be meet at thesame time the earth’s life support systems are conserved. Science education has engagedwith ecological issues to date largely through environmental education, but differentlyplaced, it has a crucial role in any transition toward sustainability.

These three sociocultural perspectives in attempting to situate science education in thebroader material and cultural conditions, in which it is produced, raise some crucial issuesat the very time when taken-for-granted and shared meanings have receded, and have beenreplaced by the uncertainty and insecurity. Concern over sustainability, now often manifestas global warming (see Gore, 2006), when connected to destabilized ideas of science, and theincreasing prominence of culturally diverse students, knowledges, and practices, profoundlychallenges what it means to enact science education appropriate for our ecologically fragile,rapidly globalizing, technoscientific, and complexly multicultural world. Clearly, a scienceeducation derived from highly abstract and fragmented statements of Western canonicalknowledge, as many versions of the widely applied standards-based science curriculaseem to be (see, e.g., Bianchini & Kelly, 2003; Cross, 1997; McNay, 2000; Ninnes, 2001;Rodriguez, 1997; Settlage & Meadows, 2002), is ill-equipped to take us forward into the21st century. Indeed research indicates that students perceive the traditional approach toscience education as largely irrelevant to the realities of their complex contemporary world(Dekkers & de Laeter, 2000; Eisenhart, Finkel, & Marion, 1996; Millar & Osborne, 1998;Ogawa, 2001). Significant amongst these studies is the recent and extensive Relevance ofScience Education (ROSE) Project that has found students across the developed world tobe largely disengaged from science education (for details, see the project Web site ROSEProject, 2004; Schreiner & Sjøberg, 2004). Despite years of formal science education,students’ scientific misconceptions are common, and their lack of motivation and feelings

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of alienation show in the decreasing numbers opting to take science beyond the compulsoryyears (also Jenkins 2005; Jenkins & Pell 2006; Lyons, 2006).

The purpose of this paper is to review the significant sociocultural literatures on sciencestudies, cultural diversity, and sustainability science to help develop another vision forscience education more suitable to the challenges of contemporaneity. While influencesof science studies and cultural diversity are not uncommon within the science educationliterature, the difference here is their juxtaposition to, and the inclusion of, the newer fieldof sustainability science. Likewise, aiming to develop innovative or alternative visionsfor science education is also relatively commonplace, and the literature contains manysuggestions for its own reformulation (see Aikenhead, 2006; Appelbaum, 2001; Hodson,1999; McGinn & Roth, 1999; Millar & Osborne, 1998; Reid & Traweek, 2000; Weaver,2001; Weinstein, 1998; as well as the Twenty-First Century Science Project from theNuffield Foundation, 2005, and University of York). My intention here then, in the interestsof diversity and plurality, is to add to these accounts to help foster more discussion aboutwhat science education could be in the 21st century.

I begin by examining the recent sociocultural literatures on science studies, culturaldiversity, and sustainability science in the usual manner of a literature review, and go ontoconsider ways science education has grappled with their implications for its own practiceto date. I then utilize the notion of recognition as a type of conceptual net that holds andconnects together these ideas to better enable their comprehension as major influences onthinking differently about science education in the 21st century. Finally, I describe attemptsto enact this vision within a science unit in a preservice teacher education course, whichaims to engage, inform, and empower beginning teachers in ways that tackle the challengesof contemporaneity.

SOCIOCULTURALLY LOCATED PERSPECTIVES ON SCIENCE

The Contribution of Science Studies and Diversity

Although science has provided powerful and reliable knowledge enabling much hu-man flourishing, De Landa (1996) suggests that the intellectual critiques in underminingsciences assertions to be objective and universal have been the most significant epistemo-logical event in recent years (also Gieryn, 1999). The resultant so-called “Science Wars”(Ross, 1996) has proponents like Wolpert (1997), Gross and Levitt (1994), and Sokal andBricmont (1998) aligned against those whose more critical perspectives have emerged fromthe fields of postcolonialism, poststructuralism, cultural studies, sociology, anthropology,and feminism. Known variously as the cultural studies of science (Weinstein, 1998), thesociology of scientific knowledge (Rose, 1997), and elsewhere as science studies (Jasanoff,Markle, Peterson, & Pinch, 1995), these areas more thoroughly examine the nature, history,production, and sociocultural location of European and ethnosciences and other indige-nous/local knowledges. Essentially, science studies argue that we can know nature onlythrough culturally constituted conceptual or epistemological frameworks, enabled and lim-ited by local cultural features such as discursive practices, institutional structures, interests,values, cultural norms, and so on (Turnbull, 2000). Its purpose is to know as much “aboutthe people and positions from which knowledge is constructed and for which it is targeted,as it is to the status of knowledge made” (Haraway, 1996, p. 4).

Harding (1998) organizes science studies into the two schools of post-Kuhnian andpostcolonial. Post-Kuhnian science studies focus on the construction of Western scientificknowledge within the Western-style scientific institutions, permeated as they are by social

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and personal beliefs (Turnbull, 2000). A large literature has emerged (see Collins & Pinch,1993; Jasanoff et al., 1995; Knorr-Cetina, 1995) that describes microsociological laboratorystudies, investigating the interrelationships between scientific method and knowledge tounderstand how scientific statements emerge from practice. They show science behind thescenes as characterized by the same messy and conflicting individual values and reputation,tacit knowledge, social negotiation, and cultural constructions as any other knowledge field(also Turnbull, 2000).

By contrast, postcolonial science studies move beyond Kuhn’s focus on Western sci-ence, to indigenous and localized perspectives emerging from a renewed acknowledgmentof cultural diversity within the globalizing world. Also known as oppositional sciencestudies (Haraway, 1996), they draw from anti-Eurocentric histories such as “science andimperialism studies” that have revealed links between the development of science andEuropean colonialism (Osborne, 1999; Paty, 1999). Postcolonial science studies argue thatthe normative conceptualization of “science” contrasts it to earlier European (premodern)and non-European (including indigenous) knowledge systems and practices. For Harding(1998), the identification of “science” with the epistemologies, practices, and applicationsof the West recasts Western science itself as an ethnoscience and reveals its subjugationand assimilation of different non-Western scientific and cultural traditions. These practicesfit within Bauman’s (1995) view of modernity that sees Western science as privilegedtruth whose might resides in its power to define and make the definition stick. Moreover,postcolonial science studies argue that Western science and cultural indigenous knowledgetraditions should be treated on an epistemological par as each developed in response totheir culture’s need to understand, predict, and influence its environment. Along with oth-ers including Paty (1999), Harding (1998) argues for a more diverse and inclusive viewof science that sees it as any systematic attempt to produce knowledge about the natu-ral world including local knowledge systems, ethnosciences, and science as local culturalpractice.

Together, these strands of science studies erode the mythological status of universalscience within the rationalizing framework of modernity and refract it through the prismof culture. Even science’s claim to epistemological superiority (see Siegel, 2002) becomesbound and mediated through cultural codes, and social and economic power intereststhat need to be teased out and exposed. Indeed commentators, according to Aronowitz,Martinsons, and Menser (1996, p. 8) “have often claimed that science is the dominantinstitutional and ideological player in the global cultural scene, the one that most dramat-ically affects or . . . permeates our corporeal, subjective and social being.” Similarly, forde Alba, Edgar, Lankshear, and Peters (2000), science as culture means engagement withsociocultural constructs to better elaborate the ways by which science is shaped and shapesour contemporary world (also Fuller, 2000).

The Contribution of Sustainability Science

The recent emergence of sustainability science, while not yet a recognized field or dis-cipline, responds to the growing acceptance of the ecologically fragile state of our worldwith its irreversible loss of biodiversity, altered atmospheric and geological conditions, andits vast human load beginning to exceed carrying capacity. It has developed from a varietyof the fields including environmental science, science and technology for sustainability,Third World development studies, economics, social and political sciences, globalization,cultural studies, and anthropology. Sustainability science draws heavily upon, and is sup-ported by, a large number of international reports and meetings including the 1992 UnitedNations Conference on Environment and Development, Agenda 21; the U.S. National

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Research Council 1999 publication, Our Common Journey; the 2000 United Nations Gen-eral Assembly Millennium Declaration; the World Summit on Sustainable Developmentheld in Johannesburg in 2002; the International Council for Science’ 2002 collaboration,Science and Technology for Sustainable Development; and as the major themes of the2002 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the 2003Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

Significant among these international reports/meetings was the Swedish Friibergh ManorWorkshop on Sustainability Science (see Kates et al., 2001). In essence, the FriiberghWorkshop identified sustainability science as a transdisciplinary approach that recognizesthe limitations of traditional science and other disciplines in investigating the complex-ities of socioecological assemblages (see also Clark & Dickson, 2003; Gallopin, 2002;Hamilton, 2003; Raven, 2002). Its core questions include the following (Kates et al.,2001):

1. How can the dynamic interaction between nature and society, including lags andinertia, be better incorporated into emerging models and conceptualizations thatintegrate earth systems, human development, and sustainability?

2. How are long-term trends in environment and development, including consumptionand population, reshaping nature–society interactions in ways relevant to sustain-ability?

3. What determines the vulnerability or resilience of the nature–society system in par-ticular kinds of places and for particular types of ecosystems and human livelihoods?

4. Can scientifically meaningful “limits” or “boundaries” be defined that would provideeffective warning of conditions beyond which the nature–society systems incur asignificant risk of serious degradation?

5. What systems of incentive structures, including markets, rules, norms, and scien-tific information, can most effectively improve social capacity to guide interactionsbetween nature and society toward more sustainable trajectories?

6. How can today’s operational systems for monitoring and reporting on environmentaland social conditions be integrated or extended to provide more useful guidance forefforts to navigate a transition toward sustainability?

7. How can today relatively independent activities of research, planning, monitoring,assessment, and decision-making support better integration into systems for adaptivemanagement and societal learning?

Building upon the Friibergh Statement, Clark and Dickson (2003) have organized anagenda for sustainability science into four components. First, they argue for a more sys-tematic and international consensus on the priorities, goals, and assessment mechanismsfacilitating the transition to sustainability. For example, the “WEHAB” targets for water,energy, health, agriculture, and biodiversity drawing from the Millennium Declaration andthe World Summit on Sustainable Development provide a focus for problem-driven re-search (also Kates & Parris, 2003). Second, such problem-driven research needs to exitwithin a variety of spatial scales from the global through to national, community, andthe local that maybe geographical, biological, temporal, discursive, and communitarian(see also Harvey, 2000). The resultant production of diverse and successful place-basedknowledge will probably remain largely unknown beyond their places of origin and ap-plication. Third, Clark and Dickson (2003) describe a major role of sustainability scienceas producing important fundamental knowledge on the complexity of ecological–socialsystems. Such knowledge would move beyond the reductionist tendencies within the envi-ronmental sciences that have provided islands of understanding within oceans of ignorance

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(Lowe, 2001). Sustainability science is thus a network science that emphasizes the patternsand relationships emerging from self-organization and coevolution (see also Holmgren,2002). Finally, sustainability science investigates questions of methodology best summa-rized by the Friibergh Statement itself:

By structure, method, and content, sustainability science must differ fundamentally frommost science, as we know it. Familiar approaches to developing and testing hypothesesare inadequate because of non-linearity, complexity, and long time lags between actionsand their consequences. Additional complications arise from the recognition that humanscannot stand outside the nature-society system. The common sequential analytical phases ofscientific inquiry such as conceptualizing the problem, collecting data, developing theoriesand applying the results will become parallel functions of social learning, which incorporatethe elements of action, adaptive management and policy as experiment.

Clearly, sustainability science moves beyond the environmental sciences that have, by con-trast, privileged the natural subsystems, reducing human interactions to a series of inputsor outcomes now thought to be inadequate for understanding the dynamics and complex-ities of the nature–society interactions (Gallopin, 2002). A recent example is Kaneshiroet al.’s (2005) study of the Hawaiian Island’s unique mountain-to-sea ecosystem from asocial–ecological systems perspective that attempted to translate the theoretical perspective“into practical, ‘on-ground’ solutions to sustainability problems” (p. 2). Kaneshiro et al.used interdisciplinary research teams, and a “learning community” approach of scientists,researchers, teachers, agency and nongovernmental personnel, and private citizens, to focuson ecological and cultural restoration initiatives of local communities, as well as outdoorlaboratories for studying ecosystem and human health linkages. They found that projectparticipants required a great deal of tenacity, resilience, and commitment, and needed totake extensive risks in order to move beyond the institutional and paradigmatic barriers thatfrequently limit knowledge development.

Such transdisciplinary sustainability science approaches have much in common withpostcolonial theorizations of borders and boundaries found in postcolonial science studiesand elsewhere. These views see epistemological, ideological, political, physical, and evenbiological boundaries/borders as profoundly ambivalent constructs. They meet at differentplaces, they are momentary locations in transition beyond which one attempts to move,and they are in-between sites variously described as liminal, interstitial, or hybrid thatcan be multiple and contingent, and change both the nature of the boundaries and thosewho define them (Ashcroft, 2001; Kraniauskas, 2000; Mignolo, 2000). “They becomenot boundaries so much as a variety of attempts to draw boundaries” (Beck, Bonass, &Lau, 2003, p. 19). This leads to a multiplication of claims to knowledge with knowledgeboundaries between scientific and unscientific, between science and politics, and betweenexperts and layman becoming drawn in several different places simultaneously, making it“abundantly clear that every given is in fact a choice, and that at the level of fundamentalpropositions, such ultimate starting points can only be normatively grounded, or defendedas useful a priori constructs” (Beck et al., 2003, p. 16; see also Kraniauskas, 2000; Mignolo,2000). Unfortunately, developing this argument further would move me beyond my purposehere. Hence, it is sufficient to note that “philosophical and epistemological border thinkingscholarship” (after Mignolo, 2001) like this, reiterates the validity of sustainability sciences’transdisciplinary approaches to knowledge producing as a way forward for the complexitiesof human–nature interactions in the 21st century.

Finally, it can be said that sustainability science acknowledges the sociocultural con-struction and interest-driven nature of scientific knowledge revealed by both post-Kuhnian

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and postcolonial science studies. More importantly though, it extends science studies intoan overt values-based position that promotes diversity as it seeks the preservation of theplanet’s life support systems that have been threatened by so many aspects of scientific andtechnological production.

In the next section, I review the impact of these sociocultural strands of scholarship onrecent thinking within science education.

THE IMPACT OF THESE SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVES ONSCIENCE EDUCATION

Science Studies and Science Education

In much the same way as science studies have critiqued the construction of scientificknowledge, they have also been used to critique the traditional approaches to science cur-ricula using fragmented bodies of canonical knowledge to reiterate a conceptualization ofscience as universally applicable objective truth seeking. Some scholarship draws on sci-ence studies’ research methodologies to explore school science as embodied socioculturalpractices (see, e.g., Cunningham & Helms, 1998; Costa, Hughes, & Pinch, 1998; Kelly& Chen, 1999; Roth & McGinn, 1998), whereas other studies situate science educationin society and culture (Aikenhead & Jegede, 1999; Lee & Fradd, 1998). Still others havecoupled the intersections of race, gender, and class with sociotransformational education(Calabrese Barton & Osborne, 1998; Rodriguez, 1997). There is also scholarship on waysthat practitioners can innovate congruent with science studies research (Hodson, 1999;McGinn & Roth, 1999; Weinstein, 1998), as there is on the implications of debates aboutthe nature of science (McComas, Clough, & Almazroa, 1998). Drawn almost exclusivelyfrom what Harding (1998) would identify as post-Kuhnian science studies, these accountsare among the myriad seeking to challenge and w/ri(gh)t/e science education (after Roth &McRobbie, 1999).

Taken together, this research argues the need for science education to go beyond impartingscientific conceptual knowledge and skills and advocates critical participation in a worlddominated by science conceptualized its sociocultural and political interests. Clearly, thereare intersections here with the aims of sustainability science. The science education–sciencestudies scholarship exposes the mythologized views of scientific practice recapitulated asreceived knowledge in school science curricula and leads to calls for more “authentic”school science experiences (for instance, Boulton & Panizzon, 1998; Cunningham & Helms,1998; McGinn & Roth, 1999; Segal, 1997). It argues for students to be shown the messinessof scientific knowledge construction, predicated on the belief that students learn best whenengaged with the practices and concepts of “real science.” For example, Cunningham andHelms (1998) contend such approaches “will better equip people to appreciate science andassess scientific claims and issues. Furthermore, it can make science study more democratic.Striving for authenticity can simultaneously foster inclusivity. . . . . . . science may becomemore attractive to marginalized students” (p. 487). Moreover, McGinn and Roth (1999)argue that see a reformulated vision of “authentic” science within a critical guise willdevelop a politically engaged stance in the long-term and futures orientation project ofsocial reconstitution.

Diversity in Science Education

Just as science studies have influenced some of the recent scholarship in science educa-tion, the increasing consciousness of cultural diversity as a consequence of globalization

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has also become prominent within the science education. Carter (2004) argues that thisliterature displays a number of related tendencies that seem to draw together into two mainpositions: one focused on the identities/subjectivities of those learning science, that is, theculturally and linguistically diverse students themselves, and the second, on considerationsof science as culturally located, Western and non-Western knowledge, frequently identifiedas multicultural approaches to science. There are a number of other approaches that aregrouped together for analytic convenience into a third more general category.

The first tendency in the literature refers to the culturally and linguistically diverse stu-dents themselves (see, e.g., Lee, 2003). This position usually acknowledges the inherentEurocentricism of Western science, but as it is judged to be humanity’s most “powerful”and “best” knowledge system, its clear delineation within the school curriculum is pro-moted (Cobern & Loving, 2001). There is widespread agreement (see Atwar, 1996) that“every student should have access (to it) in order to function competently in the main-stream, in a global economy and in an information society” (Lee, 2001, p. 499). Thefocus is on developing pedagogical strategies and curricula to enable student’s “bordercrossing” into Western science (Aikenhead & Jegede, 1999; Lee & Fradd, 1998; Michie,2003). The second tendency sees science as both Western and non-Western knowledgethat, to some extent, draws from Harding’s (1998) postcolonial science studies. This posi-tion raises questions about the place of these knowledges and practices in school science(Stanley & Brickhouse, 2001), with those like Snively and Corsiglia (2001) arguing forthe inclusion of indigenous and traditional science knowledge (see also Aikenhead, 2001,2002; Arellano, Barcenal, Bilbao, Castellano, Nichols, & Tippins, 2001). While much ofthis discussion emanates from the First World, there is an increasing contribution fromnon-Western and/or Third World contexts struggling with the tensions of multiple knowl-edge systems that see cultural, linguistic, religious, and political imperatives compel themaintenance of traditional/indigenous knowledge, at the same time as national develop-ment priorities demand the expansion of Western technoscientific knowledge (see Aikman,1997; Nakayama, Kawano, & Kawasaki, 2003; Semali, 1999).

There are other more eclectic approaches to cultural diversity in the science educa-tion literature not easily categorized into either of the above positions. Prominent here isthe work of Angela Calabrese Barton (e.g., Calabrese Barton & Tobin, 2001; Fusco &Calabrese Barton, 2001) that focuses specifically on urban settings where the consequencesof cultural diversity and economic–political disadvantage play out. Dear and Flusty (1999)describe cultural diversity in urbanized cities as multienclaves of mixed identity, makingfor heterogeneous spaces where the sociocultural dynamic works with economic polariza-tion, social unrest, racism, and homelessness to provoke innovative solutions to interethnicrelations and inequality. Conscious of this, Calabrese Barton (2000) calls on a range ofperspectives including those from science studies, to raise questions about the nature ofscientific knowledge, the relationship between science and society, and the implications forschool science in these complex postmodern settings. She seeks to reframe what is meantby science and diversity so that diversity can become resourceful rather than problematic.She argues for a critical urban pedagogy within science education that “must respond tothe political and ethical consequences that science has in the world, and must be equallyinfused with analysis and critique as it is with production” (p. 343).

As a whole, the cultural diversity literature, like that of the science studies–scienceeducation literature, recognizes the need for science education to develop culturally sensitiveand sociocultural perspectives beyond the normative canonical knowledge and skills thathave traditionally dominated its agenda. Snively and Corsiglia (2001) applaud such anapproach, claiming that science education has finally begun to explore what it means toprepare students for a culturally diverse world.

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Sustainability Science and Science Education

As a relatively new area, sustainability science is only just beginning to have an impactupon science education. Its influence is more apparent within the tertiary sector that tends tohave greater access to recent research and scholarship. Not surprisingly, it has had minimalinfluence at the school level, locked as schools are into traditional structures, interest groups,and interpretations of curricula that perpetuate the various forms of environmental science.One exception is the Kaneshiro et al. (2005) study of the Hawaiian Island’s mountain-to-sea ecosystem described above. Within the study, Pauline Chinn reports on Malama I Ka‘Aina curriculum and teacher development initiatives that integrate traditional Hawaiiansustainability and modern environmental practices to develop K-12 science curricula forteachers of Hawaiian students. She describes the “human-in-ecosystem” approach thatbrings together teachers, students, scientists, and indigenous practitioners in place-basedlearning projects of bioremediation, mapping, monitoring, and ecological restoration. ForChinn, this approach addresses questions 3, 5, 7 of the Friiberg Statement (see above) thatKates et al. (2001) consider as vital to the agenda of sustainability science.

Within the tertiary sector, courses and units in sustainability science investigate the so-cial, political, economic scientific, and technological dimensions of sustainability, method-ological questions, natural planetary systems, carrying capacity and footprints, the impactof globalization, and strategies and implications (see, e.g., Vondracek, Pullins, Rosales, &Savanik, 2002). Pedagogically, they also tend to draw from the Friibergh Statement’s recog-nition of the importance of social learning with a range of actors that include indigenousand community groups, activists, and others with a commitment to sustainability beyondthe usual groups of professional scientists. Indeed, the statement suggests that

[S]cientists and practitioners will need to work together with the public at large to producetrustworthy knowledge and judgment that is scientifically sound and rooted in social un-derstanding . . . . [and] will learn to work with all manner of social groups to recognize howthey come to gain knowledge, establish certainty of outlooks, and adjust their perceptionsas they relate to each other’s needs.

There is great potential for sustainability science to make a valuable contribution to anyscience education interested in becoming part of the transition to sustainability. Such ascience education would include an understanding of networks and systems both naturaland social, ecological knowledge, futures, permaculture design, and energy studies (seeHolmgren, 2002), along with the more traditional concepts of science. It would work withsocial groups so that students could engage in real science-based problems located intheir local community or in the cyber community. Its success would require significantreorganization and collaboration. But if science education is to take the challenges of theFriibergh Statement seriously, it needs to develop new perspectives that are necessary forthe kinds of deep social change and learning that sustainability demands.

DRAWING THESE SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVES TOGETHER

There are many ways of connecting together the above discussion on science studies,cultural diversity and sustainability science, and teasing out both sympathetic and disparatethemes to be considered further. These could include the notions of community, localism,difference, resilience, multiculturalism, social and redistributive justice, equality, the uni-versalist–particularist dialogic, the politics of identity, and so on; indeed far more than thereis room here to ponder. It is also important to consider which themes or notions can help

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formulate better versions of science education more suitable for contemporaneity. For me,the above discussion speaks overwhelmingly of the desire for recognition from all types ofpeoples, in all types of contexts, for all their knowledge generating endeavors that grapplewith the complexities of living in our plural world. Recognition is a useful conceptual netfor this discussion as it subsumes many of these related themes. It was the focus of the 2001special volume of Theory, Culture & Society introduced by Lash and Featherstone (2001)that explored aspects of diversity in the global world from a cultural sociology perspective,with contributions by prominent philosophers and scholars including Zygmunt Bauman,Nancy Fraser, and Paul Gilroy.

In essence, recognition sits behind the challenges of multiculturalism and difference, andthe desire to be understood and respected for ones’ own and ones’ cultural singularity. Thisoccurs in a risk-driven era not only known by its “War on Terror” and its identity politics,relativities, and fundamentalisms but also for its ecological and social destructions such asglobal warming. Recognition seeks acknowledgment without the specter of relativism andevaluative judgments of cultures/contexts that is guided by ethics and esteem as it workstoward a politics of the practical and the redistribution of social and natural goods (Lash& Featherstone, 2001). Fraser (2001) and Bauman (2001) argue this can be done only ifcultural claims are treated as questions of morality, justice, and esteem. This does not meanall cultural claims are celebrated for their own sake, as all differences are not equal. Whatis equal is the right of participation, and the right to be heard and present a case which isthen open to the judgment of esteem and status.

That said, the difficulty in knowing how to regard those cases must include the under-standing that legitimacy is not tied to any one culture’s or groups’ social and politicaltraditions. Gough (2003) has found Turnbull’s (2000) comparative analyses of cultural andknowledge claims useful for thinking about this issue. Having investigated the activity ofknowledge production in diverse social spaces that include Gothic cathedral building inmedieval Europe and rice farming in Indonesia, Turnbull’s (2000) focus on the localnessand performance of culture and knowledge argues it to be a process of “making connectionsand negotiating equivalences between the heterogeneous components while simultaneouslyestablishing a social order of trust and authority resulting in a knowledge space. It is on thisbasis that it is possible to compare and frame knowledge traditions” (p. 553). Turnbull’s(2000) means of comparing knowledge coupled with his theorization of third spaces where“contrasting rationalities can work together without the notion of a single transcendentrationality” (Turnbull, 2000, p. 228) creates room to facilitate recognition and opens pos-sibilities for the coproduction of knowledge. Ultimately this approach, Fraser (2001) andBauman (2001) contend, allows for a communal reciprocity of recognition as a basis for in-tercultural dialogue and interpretative understanding that seeks cultural justice and humanecohabitation. Similarly, Walby (2001, p. 8) argues that the “ideology of recognition maybe used as a “handmaiden for struggles of equality” in today’s global era (her italics). Thevery complexities of contemporaneity means that perpetual coexistence is all we have (myitalics), and our fundamental need and purpose is to give “everyone a chance” (Bauman,2001, p. 146).

It is clear that seeking the right of participation, the right to be heard, and the rightto present a case are embedded within the literatures on particularly, postcolonial sciencestudies and cultural diversity, as well as their intersection with science education. Reit-erating Harding’s (1998) view from above that argues for a more diverse and inclusiveview of science as any systematic attempt to produce knowledge about the natural world,including local knowledge, ethnosciences, and science as local cultural practice, is evidenceenough. Furthermore, it is also apparent that the sustainability science and sustainabilityscience education literatures seek a politics of the practical and the redistribution of social

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and natural goods. This is most evident in the questions contained within the FriibergStatement.

So, while the ideology of recognition allows the voices to be heard within these literatures,it is another matter to know what to do with these voices. Hence, the judgment of esteemand status as a question of morality on the endless quest toward cultural justice and humanecoexistence is not only a thorny issue but worthy of more space than is available here! Gough(2003) for one sees it as a process of creating transnational “spaces” in which scholars fromdifferent cultures/localities collaborate in reframing and decentering their own knowledgetraditions and learn to negotiate trust in each other’s contributions to their collective work.His view has much in common with the border epistemologies and theorizations describedearlier (see Mignolo, 2000). However, I can only tackle this difficult area by illustratingfrom my own theory and practice, which I do in the next section.

DEVELOPING A VISION FOR SCIENCE EDUCATION

The preceding discussion on science studies, cultural diversity, and sustainability scienceas it coheres around the notion of recognition has begun to influence my thinking, and thatof my colleague Caroline Smith, about the forms a more contemporaneous science educa-tion could take. [It is worth noting that there has also been other influences that includeideas from ecofeminism (see Warren, 2000), postcolonialism (Young, 2003), globalizationtheory (Beck, 2000), future studies (Slaughter, 1996), critical theory (Tyson, 1999), per-maculture (Holmgren, 2002), and deep ecology (Cocks, 2003). Space limitations precludetheir discussion here, and indeed several of these perspectives have been considered in ourwritings elsewhere, for example, Carter (2005a, 2000b, 2007, in press) on globalizationand science education, Carter (2004, 2006) on postcolonialism and cultural diversity inscience education, Smith (2004) and Mudzeilwana and Smith (2001) on future studies andeducation, and Smith (2001a, 2001b) on permaculture. It has indeed been a very broadchurch!].

Taken together, these influences have coalesced into a belief that science education shouldnot only work toward a deeper understanding of our planetary systems but also toward theexplicit goals of creating a more just, equitable, and sustainable world (see Carter & Smith,2001, 2003, 2004). More specifically, our vision contends that humans have always triedto understand and shape their world: sciences and technologies are as old as humanity.All cultures create their own stories or cosmologies that not only help explain but alsoprovide a sense of wonder and awe about the universe and their place within it. This moreinclusive view of science sees it as any systematic attempt to produce knowledge about thenatural world and makes room for other local/indigenous, indeed multiple, and previouslyexcluded conceptualizations of scientific knowledge. Hence, scientific knowledge has arisenfrom local contexts and in response to local needs. Consequently, reiterating postcolonialscience studies (Harding, 1998), and the growing acceptance of cultural diversity, there areas many sciences as there are contexts/cultures. Western science can thus be understood as aparticular form of local knowledge tradition, shaped by and reproductive of, the culture andsociety in which it is articulated. Its epistemological robustness, reliability, and the status ofthe knowledge produced, however, has ensured its universal acceptance as a powerful wayof understanding our world. As such, it has been responsible for much human flourishing.But enmeshed as it is in the global capitalist progress paradigm, Western science has alsobeen coproductive of hegemonic interests resulting in many unintended consequences. Thisincludes ecological devastation that threatens the future of planetary life and many formsof imperialism. The new area of sustainability science seems to offer a timely approach thatmay have the potential to transcend the epistemological and methodological limitations

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176 CARTER

of Western science, build upon its strengths, and in making itself intentional and explicit,facilitate the move toward a more just and sustainable world as part of the politics of thepractical.

My colleague and I have applied this vision of science education to the development ofa preservice general science unit for undergraduate primary teachers who, by and large, donot have successful previous experiences with science, and are consequently more receptiveto a different approach (see Carter & Smith, 2003). The unit’s organizing framework drawson the development of science as cultural story reiterating the themes of recognition,difference, and localism derived from the literatures of science studies, cultural diversity,and sustainability science. It begins by exploring cosmologies from various cultures todevelop the postcolonial science studies notion that all human societies have creationstories that have arisen in local contexts and in response to local needs. Cosmologiesprovide a sense of awe and wonder about the universe in which we live and our place withinit. The unit goes on to discuss the history(s) of the development of Western science from apost-Kuhnian science studies perspective conceptualized within the cultural, economic, andpolitical forces of the times. Western science is thus presented as a localized ethnosciencethat has transcended its immediate determinants through its reliability and usefulness.Again drawing from postcolonial science studies and the literature on cultural diversity,other sciences including indigenous sciences are also acknowledged for their usefulnessand importance. The central Western science precepts of energy and matter are then studiedin more detail, both conceptually and within their historical context, as the necessaryprecursors for the potent technologies of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. The morecontemporary technologies of biotechnology and nanotechnology are examined and placedwithin the globalizing capitalist ideology that is helping to shape their outcomes.

At this point, students are asked to draw their images of the future. Consistent with theresearch (see Hicks, 1996), and with few exceptions, they tend to be dystopian, displayingtechno and ecological devastation that arises from the cultural conditions of the day. Theseimages are problematized, leading to envisioning different and more sustainable futures.Systems theory, ecological knowledge, energy studies, permaculture design, indigenousperspectives, community-based science, and citizen science as aspects of sustainabilityscience become privileged as ways of moving forward to a more just and sustainablefuture. We attempt to finish the unit on an optimistic theme that enables students to feelempowered about understanding the place of science in their world, and believing that theycan influence their futures.

Throughout the unit, there is a strong emphasis on the important conceptual ideas ofWestern science that takes it beyond what might otherwise be regarded as a history andphilosophy of science approach. It explicitly aims toward the kind of deep social learningand change encapsulated within challenges of the Friibergh Statement. It is an innovativecourse in that it is strongly underpinned by theoretical perspectives not usually devel-oped within a general science unit of this type. As this unit has only been taught for acouple of years, there has been no systematic attempt as yet for its rigorous evaluation.Nonetheless, students seem to appreciate the unit’s approach, considering it more relevantto their lives and a broader view of science than the textbook-based and teacher-directedscience “education” of their previous school experiences. We believe that the continueddevelopment of this approach has great potential for the future.

SUMMARY

This paper draws together the significant sociocultural literatures on science studies,cultural diversity, and sustainability science to develop another vision for science education

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SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE ON SCIENCE EDUCATION 177

more suitable to the challenges of contemporaneity. While the influences of science studiesand cultural diversity are not uncommon within the science education literature, what isdifferent here is their juxtaposition, and the inclusion of the newer field of sustainabilityscience. Furthermore, these perspectives have been used to develop a different approachto science education that sits alongside those within the literature promoting new ways oflooking at science education. The approach described here adds to these accounts as a wayof fostering more discussion about what is possible for science education. This approachhas been enacted within tertiary-based, general science unit for preservice primary teachers.A number of dilemmas have arisen consequent to the implementation of the unit that needto be further considered. Nonetheless, the vision of science education underpinning thisunit has the potential to engage science education in current dialogues about key issues thatare practically and intellectually urgent and that will both advance it as a discipline. Whilewe may wish for neat solutions to innovate better science education, as Turnbull (2000)reminds us, we must live with the messiness of all knowledge making including scientificbecause

[i]f we do not celebrate the messiness of all our knowledge making we will in the long runcondemn ourselves to an inevitable death bought on by the inflexibility and sterility of amonoculture. In the long run, social and cultural complexity cannot be winnowed away;it’s all there is (p. 227).

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Science Education DOI 10.1002/sce