Characteristics
Alienation is as a sociopsychological construct broadly defined as the state of being/feeling disengaged, disempowered, and isolated from people and/or the local contexts where one is embedded (Lukes 1978; Calabrese 1987). Its symptoms are both individual and collective and are manifested in unique ways by those who have been positioned, or position themselves as, the Other. To be the Other is to be outside of an established norm, and being outside of an established norm results in the development of a bevy of emotions which result in “the distancing of people from experiencing a crystallized totality both in the social world and in the self” (Kalekin-Fishman 1998, p. 6).
In science education, where teaching is often focused on the meeting of arbitrary benchmarks of science skills, and learning is assessed based on the ability of the student to memorize information, alienation is one of the chief means through which a large number of youth underachieve in science. This...
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Emdin, C. (2015). Alienation. In: Gunstone, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Science Education. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2150-0_350
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