This chapter briefly traces the history of nature of science (NOS) orientations in science education, notes some differences in the way NOS is defined and in arguments used to justify its inclusion in the school science curriculum and acknowledges the centrality of NOS to recent curriculum and research initiatives based on scientific argumentation, modelling and consideration of socioscientific issues (SSI). Some critical scrutiny is directed towards the so-called consensus view of NOS and whether it adequately and appropriately represents the diversity of approach across the different subdisciplines of science. Of course, serious consideration of curriculum initiatives inevitably leads to questions concerning assessment policy and practice. Key issues relate to the philosophical adequacy and psychometric robustness of questionnaires, interviews, observation studies and approaches utilizing students’ drawings and stories and how best to record and report findings. After a brief discussion of some important pedagogical matters and consideration of some contemporary emphases in NOS-oriented curricula, including SSI-oriented teaching and efforts to shift attention towards a more authentic view of contemporary scientific practice (what Ziman (2000). Real science: What it is, and what it means. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. calls post-academic science), the chapter concludes with a piece of personal self-indulgence: advocacy of a move towards an action-oriented, SSI-based approach to science education at the school level, and beyond.

Nature of Science in the Science Curriculum: Origin, Development, Implications and Shifting Emphases

Over the last 50 years, policy makers and STEM educators have argued for Scientific Literacy (SL). SL is a typical boundary object that everyone can agree on, but that is filled with different meanings by different stakeholders. Roberts (as published in Abell SK, Lederman NG (eds), Handbook of research on science education. Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah, pp. 729–780, 2007) has identified two main orientations of SL: Vision I starts from and focuses on scientific content and scientific processes to learn about corresponding applications later, while Vision II focuses on contextualizing scientific knowledge for giving its use in life and society meaning. The tension between Vision I and II can also be related to the tension between “pipeline science – preparing future scientists” and “science for all”. Recently, a more advanced vision of SL was suggested. It is called Vision III and emphasizes philosophical values, politicization and critical global citizenship education. Such an orientation can be well justified by the Central/Northern European educational and cultural tradition called Bildung. In its most contemporary understanding, it is agency-oriented. Bildung-oriented science education aims at making the student capable of a self-determined life in his/her socio-cultural environment, participation in a democratic society, and of empathy and solidarity with others. This concept is also closely connected to more recent educational paradigms that were defined also beyond Europe, e.g. the ideas of Education for Sustainability (EfS) and transformative learning. Both concepts aim on skills development for critical-democratic participation and for shaping our society and culture in a sustainable way. The different visions of SL have consequences for the content and culture of teaching and learning of science and technology. Accepting Vision III requires awareness that our view of selecting and teaching certain content is dependent on our culture, for example our norms, values and worldviews, and on the society we are living in. Learning (cognition) must be complemented with not only meta-learning (metacognition), but also transformative learning, where things are considered from multifaceted (e.g., cultural) perspectives. The discussion in this chapter focuses on educational implications of Vision III of SL and its connection to critical-reflexive Bildung, EfS and transformative learning.

Reconsidering Different Visions of Scientific Literacy and Science Education Based on the Concept of Bildung

Social class disparities in higher education between working-class students (i.e., students who are low income and/or do not have parents with four-year college degrees) and middle-class students (i.e., students who are high income and/or have at least one parent with a four year-degree) are on the rise. There is an urgent need for interventions, or changes to universities' ideas and practices, to increase working-class students' access to and performance in higher education. The current article identifies key factors that characterize successful interventions aimed at reducing social class disparities, and proposes additional interventions that have the potential to improve working-class students' chances of college success. As we propose in the article, effective interventions must first address key individual and structural factors that can create barriers to students' college success. At the same time, interventions should also fortify school-relevant selves, or increase students' sense that the pursuit of a college degree is central to “who I am.” When students experience this strong connection between their selves and what it means to attend and perform well in college, they will gain a sense that they fit in the academic environment and will be empowered to do what it takes to succeed there.

Feeling at Home in College: Fortifying School‐Relevant Selves to Reduce Social Class Disparities in Higher Education

This paper reviews the significant sociocultural literatures on science studies, 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 sustainability 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. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed92:165–181, 2008

https://www.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/sce.20228

Sociocultural influences on science education: Innovation for contemporary times

Science has seen considerable change in recent decades with the emergence of a new economic and sociopolitical contract between science, the nation, state, and private commercial interests. Generally regarded as having been precipitated by globalization, these changes in the sciences are beginning to be documented by a range of commentators. Clearly, science's changing forms hold profound implications for the development of science education. As there is little science education scholarship exploring the implications sciences' altering forms, this paper attempts to investigate the relationship at more depth. Detailing this relationship is important because it can help formulate new questions, and methods for their investigation, relevant to the work of science education in the newly global world. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 45: 617–633, 2008

Globalization and science education: The implications of science in the new economy

In many educational contexts throughout the world, increasing focus has been placed on socio-scientific issues; that is, disagreements about potential personal, social and/or environmental problems associated with fields of science and technology. Some suggest (as do we) that many of these potential problems, such as those associated with climate change, are so serious that education needs to be oriented towards encouraging and enabling students to become citizen activists, ready and willing to take personal and social actions to reduce risks associated with the issues. Towards this outcome, teachers we studied encouraged and enabled students to direct open-ended primary (e.g., correlational studies), as well as secondary (e.g., internet searches), research as sources of motivation and direction for their activist projects. In this paper, we concluded, based on constant comparative analyses of qualitative data, that school students’ tendencies towards socio-political activism appeared to depend on myriad, possibly interacting, factors. We focused, though, on curriculum policy statements, school culture, teacher characteristics and student-generated research findings. Our conclusions may be useful to those promoting education for sustainability, generally, and, more specifically, to those encouraging activism on such issues informed by student-led research.

Students’ Research-Informed Socio-scientific Activism: Re/Visions for a Sustainable Future

Science education has been slow to respond to the challenges of the new global age evident from the few references to globalisation within its literatures. I have already argued elsewhere that, despite science education’s preference for the traditional categories of analysis, globalisation is clearly at work in the conceptual language science education uses, as well as in its more recent policy and practical transformations. This chapter aims to further describe the ways in which globalisation shapes and influences science education by outlining the three global discourses of global information culture, sustainability and post-colonialism before moving on to identifying some of their implications which we as science educators can only begin to grapple.

Globalisation and science education : Global information culture, post-colonialism and sustainability

It is interesting to note that while most globalisation theorists would acknowledge education is, or should be, implicated in accounts of globalisation (Fitzsimons, 2000), its literature does not explore the relationship at any length (exceptions are Beck, 2000; Scholte, 2000). Globalisation theorists’ preoccupation with elaborating the political, economic, legal, civic and other material and cultural dimensions of globalisation unfortunately seems to have marginalised education as a key field within these categories. This is somewhat surprising given the centrality of knowledge to globalisation, and its obvious intersection with education as a major player in its production, rationalisation and allocation (Delanty, 1998). It is also surprising considering education’s powerful ability to explore different thinking of whatever persuasion. Consequently, it is left to the discourses of education to explore the way globalisation constructs contemporary education, and education represents and circulates globalisation. Theses discourses draw together around the two main positions of globalisation commonly identified by theorists like Jameson (1998, p. 56) as the “twin, and not altogether commensurate, faces” of the universalising and hegemonic economic-political globalism, and the fragmented, diverse and opening cultural form (see also Delanty, 2000; Tomlinson, 1999; Wilson & Dissanayake, 1996). The rapidly growing educational policy literatures for example, have begun to investigate questions of global economic and political restructuring and the implementation of various reform agendas (see for example Apple, 2001; Ball, 1997; Lingard & Rizvi, 1998; Morrow & Torres, 2000; Wells, Carnochan, Slayton, Allen & Ash, 1998), while globalised cultural flows, and growing diversity have been explored within comparative and multicultural education discourses (see for example Dimitriadis & Kamberelis, 1997; Stoer & Cortesao, 2000). Educational policy scholars have largely argued that the discourses of neoliberalism and neoconservatism have dominated the agenda of educational reform precipitated by globalism (see for instance Apple, 2001; Morrow & Torres, 2000; Wells et al., 1998). Educational reform is the consequence of the extension of

Globalisation and policy reforms: science education research

This chapter argues for science education’s engagement with contemporaneity, and for a repositioning of its research directions to better address the theoretical and methodological challenges raised. To this end, this chapter utilises the more usual discourses of globalisation (for example, Delanty, 2000; Harvey, 2000; Jameson, 1998), as well as Lash’s (2002) formulation of global information culture. It begins by briefly recounting the impact of globalisation on education, and consequently, science education (Carter, 2005), before describing some of Lash’s (2002) perspectives on global information culture relevant to contemporary science education. It sketches out some possible research directions for science education, as well as identifies some of the crucial issues of contemporaneity with which we as science educators can only begin to grapple

Science Education and Contemporary Times: Finding Our Way Through the Challenges

We live in an alarmingly unjust world. Oxfam (2019) suggested that about 26 individuals have total wealth equivalent to approximately 3.8 billion people. Meanwhile, particularly for poorer societal members, many personal, social and environmental harms are accumulating — perhaps most notably those linked to climate disruption, but also human illnesses, privacy invasions, devastation from armed conflict, habitat destruction, species losses and many others. Among possible causes, there is much evidence and argument to suggest that the world’s richest people are largely culpable. Critical to their hegemony, in turn, are fields of science and technology. Rather than conceiving of characteristics of such fields through relatively narrow philosophical lenses, however, it appears necessary to think of them as interwoven with myriad societal and environmental entities — and perhaps more importantly, as key elements of strategic networks of phenomena supporting elite societal members. Accordingly, in democratic societies, citizens need enlightenment about such networks and, moreover, education enabling them to actively address injustices concerning them. Such educational goals are explored in this chapter, partly in light of narratives we provide of approaches in school science and science teacher education that may serve as useful resources for advancing social justice and environmental health goals.

Lynette Carter

Papers

Students’ Research-Informed Socio-scientific Activism: Re/Visions for a Sustainable Future

Globalisation and science education : Global information culture, post-colonialism and sustainability

Globalisation and policy reforms: science education research

Science Education and Contemporary Times: Finding Our Way Through the Challenges

Capitalism, Nature of Science and Science Education: Interrogating and Mitigating Threats to Social Justice