Abstract
Situated in a large urban high school, we describe, using Actor-Network Theory (ANT), the subject positions that emerge when students are faced with the tasks of identifying a personally relevant STSE issue and devising strategic sociopolitical actions to affect said issues. As such, we consider how various human and non-human actors interact in our varying networks of relation, in which STEPWISE as an activist pedagogical framework structures capacities for ethical engagement through praxis. As students were faced with the tensionality binding local and global perspectives, we observed their often ambivalent maneuvers navigating this dyad to contextualize and localize their research informed activism within in their communities and daily lives. More specifically, we offer commentaries on how students problematize an STSE issue, how they are interessed, or positioned by a digital medium of communication (the Wiki) and finally and how they mobilize their actions to affect change.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the wonderful class for all your hard work and commitment and in particular those students and parents that gave their consent to be represented by us in this text. This chapter could not have been written without the passion and dedication that you all have. Additionally, we are grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Canada, for their generous funding of research about this case.
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Ramjewan, N.T., Zoras, B., Bencze, L. (2017). Giving Meaning to STSE Issues Through Student-Led Action Research: An Actor-Network Theory Account of STEPWISE in Action. In: Bencze, L. (eds) Science and Technology Education Promoting Wellbeing for Individuals, Societies and Environments. Cultural Studies of Science Education, vol 14. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55505-8_12
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