Contemporary Issues In Science And Technology Education

This edited volume discusses major issues in present-day science and technology education (STE). It is divided into three thematic sections: philosophical foundations and curriculum development; sustainable development, technology and society; and the learning sciences and 21st century skills. Section I examines the history and future of STE curriculum development, along with specific issues within this dynamic area. Section II explores sustainable development in three important aspects: economic development, social development, and environmental protection. Section III covers the 21st century skills that are of overarching importance to the success of learners in school and the world of work. Anchoring each chapter is an assemblage of veteran science and technology education specialists selected from across the world. The book’s target is a worldwide audience of undergraduate / post-graduate students and their teachers, as well as researchers. This book’s exploration of the ever-increasing advances in STE and its narrative writing style will be of interest to a broad range of readers.

In contemporary society, science constitutes a significant part of human life in that it impacts on how people experience and understand the world and themselves. The rapid advances in science and technology, newly established societal and cultural norms and values, and changes in the climate and environment, as well as, the depletion of natural resources all greatly impact the lives of children and youths, and hence their ways of learning, viewing the world, experiencing phenomena around them and interacting with others. These changes challenge science educators to rethink the epistemology and pedagogy in science classrooms today as the practice of science education needs to be proactive and relevant to students and prepare them for life in the present and in the future. Featuring contributions from highly experienced and celebrated science educators, as well as research perspectives from Europe, the USA, Asia and Australia, this book addresses theoretical and practical examples in science education that, on the one hand, plays a key role in our understanding of the world, and yet, paradoxically, now acknowledges a growing number of uncertainties of knowledge about the world. The material is in four sections that cover the learning and teaching of science from science literacy to multiple representations; science teacher education; the use of innovations and new technologies in science teaching and learning; and science learning in informal settings including outdoor environmental learning activities. Acknowledging the issues and challenges in science education, this book hopes to generate collaborative discussions among scholars, researchers, and educators to develop critical and creative ways of science teaching to improve and enrich the lives of our children and youths.

In this careful articulation of science, the editors provide an intellectual marriage of Indigenous science and science education in the African context as a way of revising schooling and education. They define science broadly to include both the science of the natural/physical/biological and the ‘science of the social’. It is noted that the current policy direction of African education continues to be a subject of intense intellectual discussion. Science education is very much at the heart of much current debates about reforming African schooling. Among the ways to counter-vision contemporary African education this book points to how we promote Indigenous science education to improve upon African science and technology development in general. The book also notes a long-standing push to re-examine local cultural resource knowings in order to appreciate and understand the nature, content and context of Indigenous knowledge science as a starting foundation for promoting African science and technology studies in general. It is argued that these interests and concerns are not mutually exclusive of each other but as a matter of fact interwoven and interdependent. The breadth of coverage of the collection reflect papers in science, Indigeneity, identity and knowledge production and the possibilities of creating a truly African-centred education. It is argued that such extensive coverage will engage and excite readers on the path of what has been termed ‘African educational recovery’. While the book is careful in avoiding stale debates about the ‘Eurocentricity of Western scientific knowledge’ and the positing of ‘Eurocentric science’ as the only science worthy of engagement, it nonetheless caution against constructing a binary between Indigenous/local science and knowledges and Western ‘scientific’ knowledge. After all, Western scientific knowledge is itself a form of local knowledge, born out of a particular social and historical context. Engaging science in a more global context will bring to the fore critical questions of how we create spaces for the study of Indigenous science knowledge in our schools. How is Indigenous science to be read, understood and theorized? And, how do educators gather/collect and interpret Indigenous science knowledges for the purposes of teaching young learners. These are critical questions for contemporary African education?

This book provides an overview of contemporary postgraduate research in Technology Education, bringing recent research on technology education to the attention of teachers so that they can use the findings to inform their practice, while also informing the education research community about studies being carried out in the field of Technology Education. The book brings together significant international research on Technology Education by focusing on contemporary PhD theses. While the conceptual underpinnings of each research project are explained, the focus is on elaborating the findings in ways that are relevant for practitioners. The book features contributions from doctoral students who completed their research in 2013. Each chapter employs a similar structure, with a focus on what the research means for classroom teachers. The book offers a valuable resource for researchers, teachers and potential researchers, with suggestions for further study. Each chapter also includes references to the digital edition of the respective full thesis, allowing readers to consult the research in detail if necessary.

This book explores pedagogy appropriate for the secondary school technology education classroom. It covers the dimensions of pedagogy for technology with scholarly research, including information strongly related to practice. The book discusses the nature of technology courses in secondary schools across various jurisdictions and considers how they might be viewed with regard to different epistemological frameworks. The writing is informed by, but not limited to, research and strongly related to practice with acknowledged experts in the field of technology education contributing chapters supported by evidence from technology education research or other fields. The authors speculate on pedagogical possibilities in their areas of expertise in order to consider pedagogical possibilities and develop a view of where pedagogy for technology education should move and how teachers might respond in the way they develop their practice.

This book brings together significant international research in technology education through a focus on contemporary Ph.D. theses. It highlights the conceptual underpinnings and methodology of each research project and elaborates on how the findings are relevant for practitioners. This book addresses the common disjunction between research conducted and an awareness of that research by practitioners. It examines the extent to which the research aligns with different justifications for teaching technology in schools in economic, utilitarian, democratic, cultural, and other such contexts.

This book reviews the current state of theoretical accounts of the what and how of science learning in schools. The book starts out by presenting big-picture perspectives on key issues. In these first chapters, it focuses on the range of resources students need to acquire and refine to become successful learners. It examines meaningful learner purposes and processes for doing science, and structural supports to optimize cognitive engagement and success. Subsequent chapters address how particular purposes, resources and experiences can be conceptualized as the basis to understand current practices. They also show how future learning opportunities should be designed, lived and reviewed to promote student engagement/learning. Specific topics include insights from neuro-imaging, actor-network theory, the role of reasoning in claim-making for learning in science, and development of disciplinary literacies, including writing and multi-modal meaning-making. All together the book offers leads to science educators on theoretical perspectives that have yielded valuable insights into science learning. In addition, it proposes new agendas to guide future practices and research in this subject.

This collection examines issues of agency, power, politics and identity as they relate to science and technology and education, within contemporary settings. Social, economic and ecological critique and reform are examined by numerous contributing authors, from a range of international contexts. These chapters examine pressing pedagogical questions within socio-scientific contexts, including petroleum economies, food justice, health, environmentalism, climate change, social media and biotechnologies. Readers will discover far reaching inquiries into activism as an open question for science and technology education, citizenship and democracy. The authors call on the work of prominent scholars throughout the ages, including Bourdieu, Foucault, Giroux, Jasanoff, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Rancière and Žižek. The application of critical theoretical scholarship to mainstream practices in science and technology education distinguishes this book, and this deep, theoretical treatment is complemented by many grounded, more pragmatic exemplars of activist pedagogies. Practical examples are set within the public sphere, within selected new social movements, and also within more formal institutional settings, including elementary and secondary schools, and higher education. These assembled discussions provide a basis for a more radically reflexive reworking of science and technology education. Educational policy makers, science education scholars, and science and technology educators, amongst others, will find this work thought-provoking, instructive and informative.