Abstract
What might activism offer science, technology and education? What might science, technology and education offer activism? This chapter provides an introduction to an edited collection exploring these themes. We start by situating assembled responses within contemporary socio-ecological contexts and selected scholarship and practices. We then take up the case for activism as an open question with potentially far-reaching implications for science and technology pedagogies and offer a reading of the following chapters as a more radical complement to existing scholarship in the field. As a basis for greater reflectivity, we then propose four maxims for critical reworking science and technology education praxis; (i) contemporary conditions, (ii) democratic political theory, (iii) subjectivities and agency; and (iv) morals and ethics. The chapter concludes with discussions of partialities and associated tensions, contradictions and limitations, as well as thanking all those involved in bringing this project to fruition.
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Notes
- 1.
Perhaps we might be seen as a gathering of ‘critical friends’ to use the concept associated with Action Research and Will Carr and Stephen Kemmis (1986).
- 2.
There are a number of adjectives that are applicable here and each carries important meanings: caring, acting, agitating, coalescing, disrupting, resisting, arguing, educating, teaching and learning. We offer the reader an invitation to select an adjective and add to this list if necessary.
- 3.
They also feature in this volume.
- 4.
https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/jaste/index (website last accessed May 13th, 2014).
- 5.
http://www.chrisjordan.com/gallery/epu/#e-pluribus-unum (website last accessed June 23rd, 2013).
- 6.
Whilst of course being ever cognizant and critically aware of the same rhetorical logical within our cultures and reproductive practices.
- 7.
Different theorists bring different metaphors here including coproduction, social construction, representation, performance and enactment.
- 8.
- 9.
Although this does, of course, occur – see inspiring discussions by Corburn (2009).
- 10.
Dimitris Papadopoulos’s (2010) detailed analysis of constituent politics in technoscience guides these distinctions. His analysis identifies five representations of expertise in technoscience; institutional participation, inclusion of non-human others and marginalized experiences and an alternative form of politics, ‘constituent politics in technoscience’ (proposed by the author). There is insufficient space in this introduction to explore these discussions in any detail, but these discussions seem to offer promising lines of inquiry for future work.
- 11.
Although it seems a distant dream, in this regard the image of a school that we envisage is an institution that seeks to not only nurture democratic participation but also more effectively represents teachers and youth’s interests within democracy: a school that is both an internal and external democratic advocate.
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Alsop, S., Bencze, L. (2014). Activism! Toward a More Radical Science and Technology Education. In: Bencze, J., Alsop, S. (eds) Activist Science and Technology Education. Cultural Studies of Science Education, vol 9. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4360-1_1
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