Abstract
In this final chapter, we weave together salient ideas and examples gleaned from other authors’ writing in this edited collection with our perspectives on relevant literature. As we stated in the introductory chapter here, we believe that contributing authors have bravely engaged in critical scholarship regarding socioscientific issues and, related to that, offer very progressive perspectives and practices for science and technology education that we all hope will help contribute to increases in social justice and environmental wellbeing. We agree with many scholars here that the wellbeing of individuals, societies and environments are under considerable stress – very likely associated with the immense power held within a vast and complex network of actants (material and semiotic), largely controlled by relatively few individuals and groups whose main purpose appears to be personal enrichment, often at the expense of others and environments. Our world is a strange – and, we believe, highly problematic – mix of never-satiated, largely celebratory, consumerism and gut-wrenching, but largely submerged, poverty and environmental degradation. Enmeshed in the global capitalist network behind this scenario are many fields of science and technology and much of science education. Science education networks, particularly under the current ‘STEM’ movement, appear to focus on generation of the relatively few students who may supply capitalists with immaterial labour – professionals, such as engineers, scientists, accountants, etc., who may develop innovative designs for commodities and their marketing. Complementing this function, appears to be generation of large numbers of citizens mostly prepared to serve as consumers (e.g., of labour instructions and commodities). Their consumerism, while enriching a few capitalists, appears to be largely-responsible for many potential problems associated with socioscientific issues discussed here. While several authors in this book lament difficulties challenging capitalist hegemony, rays of hope also are provided in several chapters regarding socio-political actions in the public sphere, elementary and secondary science education and in higher education contexts.
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Although fields of science and technology sometimes work together, they often are integrated and individual practitioners conduct a combination of the two. Moreover, some suggest that the two fields share the same general epistemology. Consequently, they often are thought of as one merged field, perhaps called technoscience (Sismondo 2008).
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Depending on their jurisdictions, different people – including authors in this book – refer to such issues by different names (with acronyms like ‘STSE,’ ‘SSI’ & ‘SAQ’). Although we acknowledge differences among these various terms and associated foci, we use the term socio-scientific issues – mainly because the site of its origin, the USA, continues to have significant influence on education around the world.
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You can learn more about this framework at: www.stepwiser.ca
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Bencze, L., Alsop, S. (2014). Afterword: Towards Technoscience Education for Healthier Networks of Being. In: Bencze, J., Alsop, S. (eds) Activist Science and Technology Education. Cultural Studies of Science Education, vol 9. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4360-1_34
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