Activity, Discourse, & Meaning Some Directions for Science Education

Abstract

This chapter emerged from dialogues at the 2008 Springer forum held at Graduate Center of the City University of New York. The forum considered paradigms for research in science education. The conversations began by examining a prominent paradigm in science education, conceptual change theory, which was the subject of a recent special issue of Cultural Studies of Science Education (Roth and Tobin 2008). Conceptual change theory, and its relatives, cognitive constructivism and studies of student’s alternative frameworks, thus are a starting point for a thorough reconsideration of research on science learning. We have been asked to consider paradigms for research in science education and propose some future directions. In this chapter our contribution will be to try to take a long view of science education research based in conceptual change and constructivist perspectives and identify some alternatives for future directions. Since these theories have generally focused on student learning, and the various cognitive, social, and pedagogical contexts around learning, we limit the discussion to these areas. Through this consideration of learning in science, we identify a number of challenges and unresolved questions for the field. We do not presume to assess the entire field or offer a research agenda for science education. Rather, we note only some of the many promising areas, acknowledging that there are many others. We begin our reconsideration of the conceptual change paradigm by identifying its contribution to the field. We then consider a number of theoretical developments since the inception of conceptual change views. These developments bring into light some basic assumptions of the conceptual change view of learning, including its reliance on an individual learner as the central epistemic subject. In the second part of the chapter we examine consequences of considering a thoroughly social view of the epistemic subject and its consequences for research in science education. Behind much of the past research in science education (e.g., conceptual change, constructivism, nature of science) is the individual as the epistemic subject. These research paradigms generally start with the knowing subject as the individual, and from there examine issues of learning and knowledge. Alternatively, the emerging research in science education tends to re-conceptualize the epistemic subject as a relevant social group.