Date of Award

5-2024

Degree Type

Honors College Thesis

Academic Program

Interdisciplinary Studies BIS

Department

Interdisciplinary Studies

First Advisor

Maria Wallace, Ph.D.

Advisor Department

Center for Science and Math Education

Abstract

Science literacy is an integral skill to knowledgeably navigate the modern world (Dawson, 2014). However, most science education within the Western world takes place in the settings of formal institutions, which rely on and recreate Western cultural assumptions and biases. In these socially Western institutions, non-Western or non-dominant cultural ways of thinking are systemically replaced with science as a way of knowing (Harding, 1991; Andreotti, 2015). This tendency towards assimilation establishes a barrier for entry, preventing underserved communities or non-dominant perspectives from developing the same science literacy allowed to culturally dominant groups (Harding, 1991; Dawson, 2014). One notable exception to these tendencies are institutions of informal science education, which can allow the creation of scientific knowledge in ways that best fit their participants (Falk, 1998; Falk, 2004). Through the usage of informal science learning environments, ISLEs, multiple cultural perspectives can blend together to create a more objective way of knowing that applies to a wider variety of perspectives, not just the dominant cultural groups (Harding, 1991). By applying Sandra Harding’s theory of strong objectivity and Vanessa Andreotti’s (2015) social cartography to the existing research on informal science education (ISE), analysis of scientific reform and informal science can be synthesized. Performing this synthesis reveals the different spaces that ISLEs can occupy in regard to scientific reform, as well as the perspectives of the established scientific literature. These spaces are defined as “soft reform” spaces, where change is gradual and interpersonal, “radical reform” spaces, where change takes place at an institutional level, and “beyond reform” spaces, where science and modernity do not function as applicable ways of knowing to the populations within (Andreotti, 2015). Much of the established literature suggests changes within the “soft reform” space, with Harding’s (1991) strong objectivity as one notable example. The further writings and analysis of Harding and Andreotti (2015), including critique and analysis of modernity, science-as-is, and technology, place themselves more firmly in the “radical” and “beyond reform” spaces.

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