Abstract
Tracing more than a hundred years of US policies aimed at extending equitable science education opportunities to all students, In this chapter, I describe the many factors that have shaped those policies and influenced their implementation and outcomes. Beginning with an early twentieth century focus on the practical and civic benefits of science education, especially as a tool for helping to assimilate large numbers of new immigrants, science education policy has been shaped by a changing set of imperatives such as the need for a highly trained scientific workforce during World War II and the Cold War and a push toward racial equality during the Civil Rights era. In this chapter, I distill some lessons from these and other key periods in US history when science education was in the foreground and describe the tensions between the educational ideals of a democratic society and the practical demands of economic growth and national security.
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DeBoer, G.E. (2013). Science for All: Historical Perspectives on Policy for Science Education Reform. In: Bianchini, J.A., Akerson, V.L., Barton, A.C., Lee, O., Rodriguez, A.J. (eds) Moving the Equity Agenda Forward. Cultural Studies of Science Education, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4467-7_1
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