Nature of Science for Social Justice: Why, What and How?
“Nature of Science” (NOS) and “Social Justice” (SJ) are vivid areas in contemporary science education research. There are different conceptualizations of NOS and SJ, giving rise to divergent research agendas. NOS and SJ research areas have mostly been sep
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Nature of Science for Social Justice: Why, What and How? Lena Hansson and Hagop A. Yacoubian
1.1 Introduction “Nature of Science” (NOS) and “Social Justice” (SJ) are vivid areas in contemporary science education research. There are different conceptualizations of NOS and SJ, giving rise to divergent research agendas. NOS and SJ research areas have mostly been separate tracks, with only a few contributions across each other. The aim of this volume is to bring NOS and SJ research closer together, explore the possibilities that might arise, and start a dialogue on the characteristics of NOS for SJ. In this chapter, we prioritize SJ as an overall aim of science education and shed light on how NOS teaching can contribute to that aim. Both NOS and SJ research, in different ways, challenge traditional school science (e.g. Zacharia and Barton 2004) and add perspectives and new questions to science education research. NOS scholarship challenges teaching traditions where science is taught merely as facts (Leden et al. 2017), and where myths about science continue to be propagated (McComas 1998, 2020). It questions the image of science communicated as “sort[ing] things crisply into black and white, true and false, without any ‘shades of grey,’ partial conclusions or residual uncertainties” (Allchin 2003, p. 333). Thus, discussing issues about NOS in science classrooms challenges traditional science teaching not only due to incorporating new content, but also because of disputing those binary notions of true/false or black/white that are part of traditional school science, as different perspectives exist to approaching many L. Hansson (*) Department of Mathematics and Science Education, Kristianstad University, Kristianstad, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] H. A. Yacoubian Department of Education, Lebanese American University, Beirut, Lebanon e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 H. A. Yacoubian, L. Hansson (eds.), Nature of Science for Social Justice, Science: Philosophy, History and Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47260-3_1
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L. Hansson and H. A. Yacoubian
NOS issues (see also Leden et al. 2017). SJ literature, for its part, challenges traditional school science through visions that problematize many aspects of what characterizes traditional school science. This includes how science and school science are viewed, but also includes the roles of teachers and students (see, for example, the characteristics of “Critical School Science” in Zacharia and Barton 2004). That being said, NOS and SJ research studies have mostly been on parallel research tracks. One main focus of NOS research involves the teaching of what science is; how knowledge is developed within science; and in what ways societal, cultural and human elements are involved in these knowledge processes (e.g. Allchin 2017; Erduran and Dagher 2014; Hodson 2014; Kampourakis 2016; Lederman 2007; Matthews 2012; McComas 2020). Thus, NOS research explores how different historical, philosophical and sociological pers
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