Sociocultural Influences on Science Education: Innovation for Contemporary Times

This paper reviews the significant sociocultural literatures on science studies, cultural diversity, and sustainability science to develop theoretical perspectives for science education more suitable to the challenges of contemporaneity. While the influences of science studies and cultural diversity are not uncommon within the science education literature on innovation, the difference here is the inclusion of the newer field of sustainability science. These threads are drawn are together to help formulate a view of science education that contributes to the ongoing discussion of what it could be in the 21st century. Finally, a science unit in a preservice teacher education course is then described, which aims to engage, inform, and empower beginning teachers in ways that tackle the challenges of contemporaneity. C © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 92:165 – 181, 2008 INTRODUCTION: RECENT SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVES IN SCIENCE EDUCATION Recent decades have seen an increase in sociocultural perspectives within science education that are reflective of the cultural turn in intellectual theory more generally (Lemke, 2001). These critical, historical, political, and socioecological views, together with postmodern and feminist thinking interested in access to scientific knowledge, education, and power, are part of enlightened science education discourse (Wong, 2001). Three areas within the sociocultural are of particular interest here. First, the recent critiques of science generated from those subfields collectively known as science studies have become increasingly influential in the science education literature (see, e.g., Cunningham & Helms, 1998; Hodson, 1999; Kelly & Chen, 1999; Weinstein, 1998; and the special journal editions: Educational Policy, edited by Bromley & Shutkin, 1998 and Research in Science Education, edited by Roth, 1998). Science studies have challenged Western science’s traditional claims to be value free, objective, and universal truth, revealing instead the sociocultural Correspondence to: Lyn Carter; e-mail: [email protected] C © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.