STS Education for Knowledge Professionals

Abstract

This chapter considers the value of an education in science, technology, and society studies (STS) for managers or analysts in knowledge-based industries, government, and other professions who are concerned with managing the course of technological change. By technological change, I mean intentional social innovation in the form of new tools and new ways of using them. The term “knowledge professional” is appropriate to describe these workers, because the kinds of social innovation they analyze or manage intimately involves the creation, synthesis, dissemination and application of new, science-based knowledge. (I wavered between the term “knowledge professional” and “innovation professional” to describe the workers I am discussing here. Knowledge professional seemed too broad, perhaps too closely related to the common term “knowledge worker.” It might be taken to include data entry specialists or anyone else whose occupational use of “knowledge” is passive or routine. Innovation professional seemed too narrowly focused on those who work specifically to adopt a new technology, thus omitting, for example, research program managers, research administrators and science policy analysts, all of whom I would intend to include.)