Ralph Levinson

This book consists of stories of struggles in science education presented by a network of science educators working in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Britain, and the United States. The common goal of these educators is to produce more socially/ecologically just models and practices of science education. The book considers and reworks the key-terms of current social justice: agency, realism, justice, and power. Its first section explores re-inhabiting science in the quest for more just worlds including reterritorializing science within emergent theories of critical realism, engaging citizens activists with corporate science, and challenging neoliberalism and the forces that organize (structure) knowledge. The second section redefines praxis of science education itself through nuanced explorations of agency, decolonialism, and justice in ways that emphasize complexity, hybridity, ambivalence, and contradiction. The stories of this international group capture individual and collective efforts, motivated by a persistent sense that science and science education matter for questions of justice.

This book consists of stories of struggles in science education presented by a network of science educators working in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Britain, and the United States. The common goal of these educators is to produce more socially/ecologically just models and practices of science education. The book considers and reworks the key-terms of current social justice: agency, realism, justice, and power. Its first section explores re-inhabiting science in the quest for more just worlds including reterritorializing science within emergent theories of critical realism, engaging citizens activists with corporate science, and challenging neoliberalism and the forces that organize (structure) knowledge. The second section redefines praxis of science education itself through nuanced explorations of agency, decolonialism, and justice in ways that emphasize complexity, hybridity, ambivalence, and contradiction. The stories of this international group capture individual and collective efforts, motivated by a persistent sense that science and science education matter for questions of justice.

What is science? What is the purpose of science education? Should we be training scientists, or looking towards a greater public understanding of science? In this exciting text, some of the key figures in the fields of science and science education address this debate. Their contributions form an original dialogue on science education and the general public awareness of science, tackling both formal and informal aspects of science learning. the editors argue that a greater knowledge of science can lead to a better future, but that this can only happen through a mutual understanding between scientists, schools and the public.