Educating future scientists towards post-patrimonial governance
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Educating future scientists towards post‑patrimonial governance Dorothy V. Smith1 Received: 23 July 2019 / Accepted: 9 August 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract In this article, I use the idea of post-patrimonial governance to consider the science education of future scientists. I argue, with Anna Yeatman, that the politics of our time is structured by a contest between two kinds of post-patrimonial contractualism. Data are reported from a study of contemporary Australian scientists to show that some scientists are successfully conducting professional relationships with their publics that are consistent with what Yeatman has called the new contractualism. These approaches contrast with the neopatrimonial contractualism that typifies neoliberal governance and which is prevalent in many societies today. Science educators face a choice to provide accounts of science that acknowledge the work of these scientists and that prepare both future scientists and their future publics for professional relationships of reciprocal respect. I suggest approaches for school science education that are consistent with such a choice. Keywords Neoliberalism · Post-patrimonial governance · Contractualism · Scientists · STEM education The majority of students in school classrooms today will not work in science; policy visions for school education should take seriously the present and future needs of this majority (Malcolm 2003). In Australia, where this study is set, these apparently simple recognitions have driven many science educators since at least the Science for All movement of the late 20th century (Fensham 1985) and they are the motivations for this article. However, deciding precisely what might count as an appropriate school science education for future non-scientists has not been easy, in part because school science education has also been seen as having a clear remit for the education of future science specialists and the needs of these future scientists are generally seen as different from those of non-scientists. Generally, future scientists are seen as needing to learn more technical specialist knowledge and also as needing to be inducted into a particular view of science. To be clear, it is Lead Editor: Ajay Sharma. * Dorothy V. Smith [email protected]; [email protected] 1
Department of STEM Education, School of Education, University of New England, Armidale 2351, Australia
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not my view that future scientists and non-scientists need school education that is dramatically different, one from the other. My point, rather, is that this has been a belief that has prevailed in science education policy and curriculum development for years. In this article, I propose to consider a science education that meets the present and future needs of all students by considering the professional needs of future scientists. This is a counterintuitive step and I take it because, as I have argued elsewhere (Smith 2011), the needs of future scientists and the attendant disciplin
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