School Science Stories and a Strategy of Action for Cultural Transformation

Abstract

This methodology is underpinned by the notion of culture as a weave of practice and symbol systems in which users of culture share a semiotic field. You might assume that a shared understanding of symbol systems would result in a thickly coherent culture. Although actors understand the symbol systems that help constitute a culture, they do not use these systems in the same way and what emerges is thin cultural coherence and contested boundaries (Sewell, 1999). ‘What are taken as the certainties or truths of texts or discourse are in fact disputable and unstable’, (Sewell, 1999, p. 50). Inconsistencies and contradictions must be a factor within the culture when interaction between symbol systems and practices is not causal. Therefore within cultures such as science and school science, different texts can be represented. These texts can serve to constitute resources. Resources frame cultural structures upon which practices are enacted and which enact practices.