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Transforming Science Education for the Anthropocene—Is It Possible?

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Abstract

Since its inception, science education has been the focus of a great many reform attempts. In general, the aim has been to improve science understanding and/or make science study more interesting and/or relevant to a wider range of students. However, these reform attempts have had limited success. This paper argues that this is in part because science education as a discipline has some “blind spots”, some unacknowledged assumptions that obstruct its development and make it immune to change. While this has long been a problem, the paper argues that, in the new, “postnormal” conditions of the twenty-first century, it is now imperative that we see these blind spots and think differently about what science education is for. School science as we now know it (along with the other school subjects) developed as part of, and in parallel with, modern economies/societies, which in turn depended on the burning of fossil fuels. However, because this period of “carbonised modernity” is now coming to an end, many of the assumptions it was built on must be re-examined. This has (or should have) major implications for science education. Via an exploration of three very different “orientations to the future”, the paper aims to provoke discussion of how science education could be reconceptualised to support our transition into the post-carbon, Anthropocene era.

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Notes

  1. At least in recent policy rhetoric—see, for example, Gluckman (2011).

  2. See the following examples: Barber et al. (2013), Beare (2001), Christensen et al. (2008), Gilbert (2005), Khan (2012), Leadbeater (2011), Miller et al. (2008), Miller and Bentley (2003), Murgatroyd (2011), Prensky (2001), Robinson (2011), Tuomi and Miller (2011), Wagner (2008, 2012).

  3. BRICS refers to Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

  4. The term ‘wicked problem’ is now widely used to refer to very complex problems that are difficult or impossible to solve—or even define—using the tools and techniques of one organisation or discipline. Because they have multiple causes and complex interdependencies, efforts to solve one aspect of a wicked problem often reveal or create other problems. See Conklin (2006).

  5. The futurist Jim Dator (2009) sets out four clusters of what he calls “images of the future”: “Continued Growth”, “Collapse”, “Disciplined Society” and “Transformation”. Continued Growth is of course the dominant image. This view suggests that, while whatever exists now may change, the same basic processes will operate, much as they do today. Dator points out that most educational thinking assumes this future and actively disallows others. But, for him, if humans are to survive and thrive, this must change.

  6. See Bernstein (1971).

  7. See Bolstad et al. (2013) and Buntting and Bolstad (2013) for recent research on initiatives in these areas.

  8. For example, in New Zealand in 2012, a new “super-Ministry” was created by merging the former Ministries of Research, Science and Technology (later Science and Innovation), Economic Development, Labour, and Building and Housing. This new Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) is charged with building “closer connections between the scientists and innovators who can generate new ideas and solve problems, and the business people who can translate those ideas into income and jobs.” See: http://www.msi.govt.nz/update-me/news/2012/MBIE.confirmed.

  9. See Lyotard (1984).

  10. See also: the OpenWetWare project at MIT http://www.openwetware.org or the Science Commons project http://www.sciencecommons.org.

  11. These conditions are very different from those found in a typical school science classroom. Briefly, they include opportunities for thoughtful risk-taking, trial and error, and pushing boundaries; opportunities to create, to actively produce new things; an emphasis on multi-disciplinary learning (arts and sciences together); intrinsic motivation (“play, passion and purpose”); valuing difference and unconventionality; having space to follow interests, and to develop deep knowledge in those areas; opportunities to collaborate, to work with others with very different knowledge/expertise to solve problems that all participants care about (Wagner 2012). See also Egan (2008, 2010) for discussions of the importance of deep knowledge in at least one area.

  12. “Knowledge-building” is used here in the sense described by Scardamalia and Bereiter (2006).

  13. “Abrupt” climate change is change that is so rapid that humans and other natural systems do not have time to adapt to it (IPCC 2014). According to some commentators, we can expect this within 20 years.

  14. See note 6 above.

  15. See also http://www.modesofexistence.org.

  16. A possible starting point could be to acknowledge and support science education’s development as a wider system, a complex, inter-connected network or “ecology” of different activities, which would include informal learning contexts (museums, science centres, digital media, holiday programmes and so on), as well as schools, universities and so on (see Falk et al. 2015). Thinking about it in this way opens up a space to ask the questions Latour suggests.

  17. This list is an attempt not to define these ideas, but to capture their discursive functioning in science education.

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  1. Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand

    Jane Gilbert

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Gilbert, J. Transforming Science Education for the Anthropocene—Is It Possible?. Res Sci Educ 46, 187–201 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-015-9498-2

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