Roth, Wolff-Michael and Barton, Angela Calabrese. (2004). Rethinking Scientific Literacy. N.Y.: RoutledgeFalmer.
Pp. vii + 227
$24.95 ISBN 0-415-94843-6
Reviewed by Jennifer K. Holtz
DePaul University
December 26, 2004
The premise of Rethinking Scientific Literacy is that current efforts to enhance the scientific literacy of students and, thus, the general population, are perhaps well meaning, but inherently flawed, in that those designing and making the efforts fail to address the underlying stratification of power and marginalization of many learners. Scientific knowledge is privileged in those who both choose and are able to function within traditional science curricula, curricula that, in fact, are not made more accessible through current reform efforts, including those by the National Research Council and by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Indeed, the authors’ goals for scientific literacy are not simply to promote functional literacy (understanding how a small engine, e.g. a lawnmower, works and how to repair one) over traditional literacy (description of the structure and function of a neutron), but also to empower learners to apply their collective scientific literacy to social issues of importance (defending a watershed against development). A strong thread of critical theory and critical pedagogy is woven throughout.
In Chapter 1, Science as Collective Praxis, Literacy, Power, and Struggle for a Better World, Roth and Barton introduce science gone awry (e.g. September 11, 2001 and the subsequent military action in Afghanistan, pharmaceutical recalls, genetically modified organisms) as reasons for the typical citizen to not trust the business of science or scientists.
Few other than those in the anti-GMO and anti-globalization efforts seem to be concerned and challenge scientists to account for their actions. Time and again, industry, which often uses scientists are their mouthpieces, tells television audiences to leave them with all decisions because, so they say, they know best. Looking at the history of scientific “advances” (nuclear arms, GMOs, drugs), we doubt that scientists individually or as a community know best what is good for society. (p. 2)
While reform efforts focus on increasing the amount and types of scientific knowledge that students develop, Roth and Barton argue that reforms should instead address scientific literacy as the development of knowledge through authentic, experiential learning, from very young children through adulthood. “For too long, science educators and scientists have proposed a model according to which science for all citizens ought to look and sound like scientists’ science” (p.6-7). Taking Fensham’s (2002) call for socially structured reforms further, Roth and Barton argue that authentic experience, by definition, needs to be removed from the school. “Schooling is an activity system in which students are coaxed, urged, coerced, or forced into learning—the traditional discourse about objectives…producing artifacts…(that) produces or reproduces his or her identity and her or his role in society” (p. 8), thereby reproducing the inequities and value-laden structures inherent to the society.
Instead, “citizen science…’a form of science that relates in reflexive ways to the concerns, interests and activities of citizens as they go about their everyday business’” (p.9) should be the norm, whereby science literacy becomes a collective knowledge base through which individuals experience science while addressing personal and community issues. By doing so, they develop agency while repositioning science as “but one of many contested field and tools in the service of a truly democratic and equitable society” (p. 15). Examples of such instances comprise much of the rest of the book, from the building of a desk by a young, homeless child to the concerted effort of Canadians to maintain a watershed. While Roth and Barton neither cite nor discuss the critical pedagogy of Paolo Freire, their work resonates with Freirian themes (Freire, 1994)
Chapter 2, Scientific Literacy as Emergent Feature of Collective Praxis, introduces and focuses on the Henderson Creek watershed project, “where the boundaries dissolve to the point that students and ordinary people can participate reciprocally in activities that previously have been created for their respective age group,” (p. 21). The project arose through collaboration of three concerned residents “a farmer, a professor of environmental policy, and a research oceanographer” (p. 25), and ultimately involved students in summer projects, addressed aboriginal concerns, and implicated experts in both traditional science and politics. Situated knowledge, experiential learning and legitimate authority are pivotal themes, again alluding to the work of Freire.
Habermas’ theories of legitimacy, communicative action, and communicative ethics are obvious influences as Roth and Barton introduce the concept of legitimate authority through participant dialogue (Vogel, 1991; Warren, in White, 1995). They focus on efforts by those vested in the status quo—including some residents—to silence dissenting voices, and to instances where the authentic scientific literacy of residents, developed through years of experience situated on the land, trump traditional science. However, perhaps the most powerful statement comes from an aboriginal friend of the authors, who implicates everyone involved, including those residents having “authentic” literacy, in the destruction of the watershed. One is reminded, albeit briefly and only in Chapter 2, of the ambiguity inherent in claims of legitimate authority.
Discussion of the Henderson Creek watershed project and the scientific literacy that is both evidenced and developed through dialogue continues in Chapter 3, Scientific Literacy, Hegemony, and Struggle, as Roth and Barton further develop their argument for the de-privileging of scientific knowledge.
In the past, science and society have been thought of as two entities, two categories that are opposed like the citadel (of science) and the polis (the untutored public). Recent work in the anthropology of science suggests that the citadel is porous…Differences in interests, motives, power, and action possibilities abound. From such a perspective, we see how much science really is tied up in the thread of life as a fiber among fibers…From the perspective of the thread, science plays a role as do all the other forms of knowledge and practice; any attempt to privilege it abstracts the fact that it itself exists only because of all the other threads. (p. 50-51)
Hegemony shifts as voices are heard or not heard, based on the controlling interest of those chairing public meetings. The group’s composite scientific literacy is dependent not only on what individuals know, but on what those individuals are permitted to share. The presumption is that necessary information would evolve from discussion, given that the discussion is allowed and power is negotiated.
Indeed, “(o)verlaying this public and collective construction of scientific literacies are relationships between individuals, organizations, and subjects of study that ultimately frame what kind of work or talk gets done” (p. 77), and this social mediation of scientific literacy shifts far from rural locales in Chapter 4, Politics, Power, and Science in Inner-City Communities. The premise remains that those with power design scientific literacy, but “extending discourse networks and the accessible forms of discourse among inner-city youth provides them with opportunities to engage in new forms of knowledge and power” (p. 78). Traditional science curricula, life circumstances and societal perceptions of those circumstances marginalize the youths, but engaging them in new relationships is empowering.
Barton was instrumental in developing an after-school science program for youths aged 12 to 18 living in a homeless shelter. She describes how discussion of various issues of importance to the group led to the decision to develop a vacant lot into a community garden, a project they named Restoring Environments and Landscapes (REAL), primarily to keep drug dealers from using the lot and making the area unsafe. With the assistance of a postdoctoral fellow and a doctoral student, the youth engaged in authentic activities that, in retrospect, paralleled National Science Standard 1 Grades 9-12, Understanding Scientific Inquiry, including the use of mathematics and technology. These clearly drawn parallels are documented in Table 4.1. The students expanded discourse to include community members and engaged experts (urban environmental designers, architects and gardeners) in working meetings, thus engaging in collaborative learning and critical thinking, as well. “For many of the youth involved in REAL, extending their discourse practices and networks around doing science with and in community was much more complex than learning a list of science concepts” (p. 93).
Discussion of experiential learning, situated learning and anchored instruction, while not identified as such, continues in Chapter 5, Margin and Center. “In science education, we often talk about students as being either marginal or central to science through the lenses of the nature of science, participation in science, and inclusive classroom practice” (p. 109). Yet, the experiences of homeless and inner city youths are far removed from that of youths in the center in ways well know to educators.
The deficiency needs of Maslow’s Hierarchy are of primary importance theoretically, but also in fact for the marginalized youth described by Roth and Barton. Yet, the youths’ needs to know and understand and their needs for aesthetic order, mid-range needs per Maslow, remain (Huitt, 2004). In fact, those needs form a center distinct from that of students whom educators traditionally consider non-marginalized.
Roth and Barton present three vignettes that illustrate need fulfillment: Latisha, who did what she perceived as required, then proceeded to design a purse; Jason, who instead of making merely recycled paper, made edible paper; and Claudia, who did not design what she was asked to design, but instead made a desk. Perhaps the most challenging aspect of Roth and Barton’s book for a reviewer steeped in traditional science, albeit a reviewer dedicated to making science accessible to all, was understanding the vignettes presented.
On the surface, each youth performed a task that did or did not, to some degree, follow the instructions provided. Per Roth and Barton, each youth’s actions involved a power shift and the need for self-actualization. However, on a far more basic level, each youth appeared to address an obvious deficiency need: Latisha, the need for security—a private place—as well as the need for beauty and order; Jason, the need for food, in addition to the need to create; and Claudia, again the need for a place, as well as the need to create. Roth and Barton call these actions “creating new authority from the margin” (p. 119). For this reviewer, each was an excellent example of anchored, experiential science, situated in learner needs that had little to do with learning.
There is no mistaking that scientific literacy at this level is not what is intended by current reform efforts and, in fact, fails to bring these students into the realm of power knowledge in science as it currently exists. For those seeking to engage more students in science, as evidenced by initiatives such as National Science Foundation grants to the Miami Museum of Science and Planetarium (Girls Re-designing and Excelling in Advanced Technology (GREAT!) Judy Brown, Grant 0114669) and Kansas State University (Women on the Prairie: Bringing Girls into Science through Environmental Stewardship, Beth Montelone, Grant 0114723), defining science literacy in this manner can seem to both minimize their efforts and further marginalize affected youths.
Still Roth’s research indicates that students identified in Vancouver as learning disabled scored either equivalent to or higher than non-learning disabled students after participating in “innovative, hands-on, and discourse-focuses curriculums…designed with resident teachers to promote an agenda of science for all students” (p. 129). Building on this only a bit, but not providing any details of the research, in Chapter 6, Constructing Scientific Dis/ability, and repeating the themes developed in Chapter 4, Roth and Barton present additional vignettes and evidence in favor of experiential, situated learning that transcends both classroom and age stratification, incorporating community-wide activity whenever possible. “When educators focus on creating situations that enable rather than disable students, new possibilities of participation arise” (p. 155). Success at such tasks often leads to greater enthusiasm for science, as well as other learning with experiential formats.
Oddly, in Chapter 7, Science Education As and For Citizen Science, Roth and Barton again repeat previously presented material, in this case the Henderson Creek watershed project covered extensively in Chapters 2 and 3. While they include additional dialogue vignettes, the material does not add to readers’ understanding from earlier material.
After focusing on Western education, specifically Canadian experiences, throughout the book, in Chapter 8, Dangerous Teaching, Roth and Barton present vignettes about the challenges faced by three women teaching in Pakistan, as they return to Freirian themes of critical pedagogy and critical theory, power, legitimate authority and expanded discourse. The challenges vary little from those presented earlier in the book, except stereotypical issues related to gender.
Rethinking Scientific Literacy is highly praised on both the back cover and by the Series Editor; indeed, the first half of the book is “detailed” (Bruce V. Lewenstein) and encourages the connection of “formal science curricula to funds of knowledge that are developed in fields away from classrooms” (Kenneth Tobin). Roth and Barton establish scientific literacy as socially constructed and, thus, often ambiguous and subject to power structures.
From a reader’s perspective, they do this well in the first five chapters, which are rich with examples and explanations. Indeed, the chapters are dense and provocative; not all readers will agree with Roth and Barton’s arguments, a fact that the authors presage, often asking and answering questions that readers might raise. However, Chapters 6 through 8 are less effective, in that they repeat themes covered thoroughly in previous chapters and offer little additional, substantive material. For example, Chapter 6 would benefit significantly from detail about Roth’s research, which he addresses briefly in his introduction to the chapter, before reiterating much of Chapter 4.
References
Freire, Paolo. (1994). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Trans. Myra Bergman Ramos. Rev. ed. New York: Continuum. (1973).
Huitt, W. (2004). Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Educational Psychology Interactive. Valdosta, GA: Valdosta State University. Retrieved October 7, 2004 from http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/regsys/maslow.html.
Vogel, Steven M. (1991). New Science, New Nature: The Habermas-Marcuse Debate Revisited. Research in Philosophy and Technology 11: 157-179.
Warren, Mark E. (1995). The self in discursive democracy. In White, Stephen K. (Ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Habermas. New York: Cambridge.
About the Reviewer
Jennifer K. Holtz, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor at DePaul University’s School for New Learning in Chicago, Illinois. She previously taught and conducted both medical and educational research with the University of Kansas School of Medicine-Wichita. Her areas of interest include the actual act of research and characteristics of researchers, medical and research ethics, and how cognitive aspects of creativity affect both teaching and learning. Her doctorate is in Adult, Continuing and Occupational Education, emphasis medical education, her Masters is in Gerontology with clinical emphasis and her Bachelors is in Biology with emphasis in human biology.
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