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Towards a Production Pedagogy Model for Critical Science and Technology Interventions

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Critical, Transdisciplinary and Embodied Approaches in STEM Education

Part of the book series: Advances in STEM Education ((ASTEME))

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Abstract

While initiatives advancing STEM education are pervasive within the global landscape of educational reform today, STEM discourses and reforms largely fail to articulate or enact theoretical and epistemological shifts that critically conceptualize the impacts of science and technology in bio-physical and social worlds. The urgency to adopt STEM reforms in North American schools and to “train” students for competitive twenty-first century “knowledge economies” has resulted in an uncritical embrace of underlying STEM narratives, in turn foreclosing critical discussion, alternative models, and new perspectives on how we might do science and technology education differently. In this chapter, we review critical literature in science education in order to unpack the dominant narratives of preparation, progress, competition, and innovation that drive STEM pedagogies today. We draw upon critical sustainability studies (CSS) to articulate new axiological orientations for repositioning science and technology learning. In conjunction with CSS, we articulate the opportunities of “production pedagogy” theories and practices which provide a critical framework for revisioning science and technology education—not as developmental system that prepares students for some preordained future—but rather as a dynamic vehicle that can situate learners in agentive roles now, in the present, using real-world tools in authentic sociotechnical contexts and communities.

An earlier version of this chapter appears in future: the journal of policy, planning, and futures studies. This chapter has been substantially revised.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada

    Gabriela Alonso Yanez

  2. Faculty of Education, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Kurt Thumlert

  3. Faculty of Education, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Oshawa, ON, Canada

    Suzanne de Castell

  4. Digital Languages, Literacies and Cultures, Department of Language and Literacy Education, Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Jennifer Jenson

Authors
  1. Gabriela Alonso Yanez
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  2. Kurt Thumlert
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  3. Suzanne de Castell
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  4. Jennifer Jenson
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gabriela Alonso Yanez .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada

    Pratim Sengupta , Marie-Claire Shanahan  & Beaumie Kim ,  & 

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Alonso Yanez, G., Thumlert, K., de Castell, S., Jenson, J. (2019). Towards a Production Pedagogy Model for Critical Science and Technology Interventions. In: Sengupta, P., Shanahan, MC., Kim, B. (eds) Critical, Transdisciplinary and Embodied Approaches in STEM Education. Advances in STEM Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29489-2_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29489-2_3

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