Novelizing Native and Scientific Discourse

Abstract

In this chapter, we address the need to bring a greater number of students into science. This is one of, if not, the most fundamental goals of science education for all, especially for heretofore-neglected groups of society such as women and Aboriginal students. Providing students with opportunities to experience how science really is enacted—that is, authentic science—has been advocated as an important means to allow students to know and learn about science. Drawing on the notion of science education as novelizing discourse, the purpose of this chapter is to problematize how “authentic” science experiences may mediate students’ orientations toward science and scientific career choices. Based on a larger ethnographic study, we present the case of an Aboriginal student, Brad, who engaged in a scientific internship program. Following Brad, we articulate our understanding of the ways in which he hybridized the various mundane and scientific practices that intersected in and through his participation and by which he realized his cultural identity as an Aboriginal. Mediated by this hybridization, we observe changes in his orientation toward science and his career choices. That is, in the novelizing discourse underpinning this science education, forms of irony emerge that target epicized images of science. Moreover, it is exactly this novelizing discourse in which Brad participates and by which novelized images of science are constructed.