Enacting Citizenship in Ordinary School Science Through Deliberative Communication

Abstract

Within science education research, there is a growing focus on democratic participation. However, this research does not seem to include ideas on how deliberative communication, a central idea in critical democratic theory, might be emphasised and carried out within the typical content-focused science teaching. We explore how students’ and teachers’ ways of doing school science might, or might not, imply citizenship education as defined in Tomas Englund’s framework of deliberative communication in school settings. The students’ communication provides opportunities for them to scrutinise each other’s arguments and meet utterances with tolerance, as well as be able to form collective decisions and question authorities. As deliberative communication is one possible approach to operationalise citizenship education, our main argument is that citizenship as practice is researchable within the frame of ordinary school science. Consequently, this chapter seeks to trouble notions that dealing with citizenship in science education requires a coupling to controversial issues.