Creating spaces for rethinking school science: Perspectives from subjective and social-relational ways of knowing

Abstract

This chapter argues that critical pedagogy based within relational, participatory ways of knowing science provides a well-grounded rationale for change in science education. This argument is based on the notion that changing curriculum and pedagogy involves fundamental questions of teacher's and student's worldviews that have not been addressed in past attempts at change. Because the discourses of science (education) are socially constructed, understanding how young people come to construct meaning and knowledge in their science studies through social learning seems a promising way to accommodate socioecological, political, and cultural issues within a newly conceptualized science education.