Nature of Science for Social Justice PDF
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Science: Philosophy, History and Education Hagop A. Yacoubian Lena Hansson Editors Nature of Science for Social Justice Science: Philosophy, History and Education Series Editors Kostas Kampourakis, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland Editorial Board Michael P. Clough, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA Fouad Abd-El-Khalick, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, USA María Pilar Jiménez Aleixandre, University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain Theodore Arabatzis, University of Athens, Athens, Greece Sibel Erduran, Department of Education, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK Martin Kusch, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria Norman G. Lederman, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA Alan C. Love, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities, Minneapolis, USA Michael Matthews, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia Andreas Müller, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland Ross Nehm, Stony Brook University (SUNY), Stony Brook, USA Stathis Psillos, University of Athens, Athens, Greece Michael Reiss, UCL Institute of Education, London, UK Thomas Reydon, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Hannover, Germany Bruno J. Strasser, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland Marcel Weber, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland Alice Siu Ling Wong, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China Scope of the Series This book series serves as a venue for the exchange of the complementary perspectives of science educators and HPS scholars. History and philosophy of science (HPS) contributes a lot to science education and there is currently an increased interest for exploring this relationship further. Science educators have started delving into the details of HPS scholarship, often in collaboration with HPS scholars. In addition, and perhaps most importantly, HPS scholars have come to realize that they have a lot to contribute to science education, predominantly in two domains: a) understanding concepts and b) understanding the nature of science. In order to teach about central science concepts such as “force”, “adaptation”, “electron” etc, the contribution of HPS scholars is fundamental in answering questions such as: a) When was the concept created or coined? What was its initial meaning and how different is it today? Accordingly, in order to teach about the nature of science the contribution of HPS scholar is crucial in clarifying the characteristics of scientific knowledge and in presenting exemplar cases from the history of science that provide an authentic image of how science has been done. The series aims to publish authoritative and comprehensive books and to establish that HPS-informed science education should be the norm and not some special case. This series complements the journal Science & Education http://www.springer. com/journal/11191. Book Proposals should be sent to the Publishing Editor: Claudia Acuna. Email: [email protected]. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13387 Hagop A. Yacoubian • Lena Hansson Editors Nature of Science for Social Justice Editors Hagop A. Yacoubian Lena Hansson Department of Education Department of Mathematics and Science Lebanese American University Education Beirut, Lebanon Kristianstad University Kristianstad, Sweden ISSN 2520-8594 ISSN 2520-8608 (electronic) Science: Philosophy, History and Education ISBN 978-3-030-47259-7 ISBN 978-3-030-47260-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47260-3 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Foreword This book was conceived a few years ago during the ESERA conference in Dublin. While reading the conference programme, I noticed a session organized by Lena and Hagop on nature of science and social justice. I knew both of them personally, I was well aware of the discussions and the debates about teaching and learning nature of science, but I had never thought about the connection between nature of science and social justice, nor had I read anything on the topic. Honestly believing that as long as I live, I learn, I went to that session to see what it was about. I became so interested that Lena, Hagop and I had already agreed to have the present book published in this series by the end of the lunch break of the same day. Needless to say, I am very glad that you are now holding it into your hands, and I hope that you will find it as useful as I did. An important issue in science education is the tendency of teachers to stick with content knowledge, forgetting that if their students are to become citizens who are literate about science, they will need more than that. Content knowledge is of course important, but students also need to appreciate how science is done, what are the features of scientific knowledge and scientific practices, how the respective contexts matter, and a lot more. However, it is also important to reflect more broadly about the relation between science and society. Science and society do not simply influ- ence each other, nor do they simply interact, rather they are co-constructed. As a result, students need to be able to understand and reflect upon such ideas. This is of course far from easy to achieve, as it requires special skills by our sci- ence teachers, who are not trained as philosophers, historians or sociologists. Worse than that, those science teachers who come to teacher education programmes after finishing their undergraduate studies in science often focus on content knowledge because they have rarely had the opportunity during their studies to have any meta- scientific reflections of any kind. This is why it is left to teacher educators to culti- vate new mentalities and pave the way for teachers’ forays in the humanities and social sciences. Do we always succeed? No, of course not. But we can always pro- vide teachers with stimuli and ideas that will make them able to identify ideas and topics that are important for education. v vi Foreword Social justice and nature of science topics are already present in education. However, the contributions to this volume nicely bring these topics together and provide a lot of material for reflection. As the editors note, they also raise important questions: Why should school science aiming at social justice address nature of sci- ence? How can school science address nature of science for social justice? What nature of science-related content, skills and attitudes are required when aiming at social justice? I hope that the present volume will serve as the means to promoting reflection on such questions and a motivation for future discussion and reflection. Kostas Kampourakis Series Editor Preface The initiation of our dialogue goes back to the summer of 2016, when we first met in Flensburg, Germany, at the European regional conference of the International History, Philosophy and Science Teaching Group. At the time, we both felt passion- ate about the need of an agenda that situates the discourse on nature of science (NOS) in school science along a social justice (SJ) pathway. We continued our dialogue over the next few months and enlarged our circle by having other colleagues join the discussions. The result was the summer 2017 sym- posium that we organized in Dublin, Ireland, at the biennial conference of the European Science Education Research Association. The symposium entitled “Nature of Science for Social Justice” aimed to create a dialogue among colleagues regarding how NOS in school science could contribute to SJ. The idea to develop this volume started in Dublin. We were fortunate to have Kostas Kampourakis, our dear colleague and the Springer series editor of Science: Philosophy, History and Education, in our audience. Right after the symposium, the three of us started exploring the possibility of an edited volume in the series. A few months later, we had already signed a contract with Springer and had expanded our circle of colleagues to continue the dialogue. We are grateful that a number of schol- ars accepted our invitation to bring their contribution to this volume. The present volume aims at creating space for scholars to engage in a dialogue on NOS for SJ, with the purpose of advancing the existing discussion and creating new avenues for research. We do not aim to claim that the volume is comprehensive in addressing all problems pertinent to NOS for SJ. In fact, the volume is an attempt to bring two agendas of research, namely NOS and SJ, closer to each other with the purpose of shedding light on how and why they can and should mutually contribute to each other. The volume does not aim at reaching consensus and final answers, and that explains the lack of a conclusion chapter. Instead, we aim for a dialogue around a theme that we believe is important. We have adopted an inclusive policy. The present volume, comprised of a set of theoretical and empirical chapters, draws upon different frameworks of NOS and SJ. Accordingly, the authors use different conceptualizations and approaches as they explore issues that in different ways relate to the following questions: Why vii viii Preface should a school science aiming at SJ address NOS? What NOS-related content, skills and attitudes form the basis when aiming at SJ? How can school science address NOS for SJ? We hope that the different starting points and conceptualizations on NOS and SJ serve the aim of empowering educators and researchers to reflect on their own con- ceptualizations. Our hope is that the dialogue initiated in this volume can facilitate further dialogue, formulate new questions and explore fresh avenues of research that aims at bringing NOS and SJ agendas closer to each other. As editors, we contributed equally to the development of this volume. Initially, in late 2017, we set the vision of the volume and invited colleagues to contribute with chapters. In our work, we took a micro and a macro approach. The micro approach involved working with the authors to ensure the alignment of their visions with the vision of the volume. We also organized an internal peer review process, which helped provide constructive feedback to the authors. The macro approach involved making sure that the overall volume is focused, coherent and organized. We are grateful to all the authors for their patience and persistence with us throughout this project. Not only did they develop their chapters but also contrib- uted in reviewing other chapters. All the chapters of this volume have undergone a rigorous peer review, whereby a panel of 2–3 reviewers reviewed each chapter in addition to us. The number of times each chapter was reviewed ranged from one to three. We are also thankful for Kostas Kampourakis, for his continuous support and advice to us throughout the project, as well as the external reviewers of this volume, whose identities are anonymous to us, yet we believe their invaluable comments helped improve the quality of the final product. A word of gratitude also goes to our home universities, namely the Lebanese American University and Kristianstad University for providing us with all the needed support for completing this work. Finally, we are both grateful to our families; this work would not have been pos- sible without their support. Hagop A. Yacoubian Lena Hansson Contents 1 Nature of Science for Social Justice: Why, What and How? . . . . . . . . 1 Lena Hansson and Hagop A. Yacoubian 2 From Nature of Science to Social Justice: The Political Power of Epistemic Lessons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Douglas Allchin 3 Balancing the Epistemic and Social Realms of Science to Promote Nature of Science for Social Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Zoubeida R. Dagher 4 Capitalism, Nature of Science and Science Education: Interrogating and Mitigating Threats to Social Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 J. Lawrence Bencze and Lynette C. Carter 5 Political Entanglement and the Changing Nature of Science . . . . . . . 79 Jesse Bazzul 6 Does Research on Nature of Science and Social Justice Intersect? Exploring Theoretical and Practical Convergence for Science Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Sibel Erduran, Ebru Kaya, and Lucy Avraamidou 7 A Discursive Analysis of Relationships Between Nature of Science and Citizenship Education: The Case of Brazilian Science Textbook Evaluation Policies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Rita Vilanova and Isabel Martins 8 Teaching About Sciences in/for the Global South: Lessons from a Case Study in a Brazilian Classroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Cristiano B. Moura, Iamni Torres Jager, and Andreia Guerra ix
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